Kalkette Knits

Insomnia and a Cowl or How Sometimes Things Just Come Together

2012-03-03T10:51:00.003-06:00

As you may have heard (since I've been whining about it pretty constantly) I have had a cold lately. In trying to stay bundled up and warm while not spending all my time in bed, I've been wearing my little shawlettes around my neck a lot. I do this all the time when I'm well also but in this case it was partly to stay warm and protect my neck. They kept falling off though and I was getting very frustrated. I decided, for the first time in my life, that I wanted a cowl that didn't come undone, that you had to pull over your neck and it would stay on. Since I'm still on a yarn diet and really, I wasn't going anywhere to buy yarn anyway, I went stash-diving and came up with some lovely pink yarn.

There's a big old sticker over the label so I can't really read it but it does say that it's made of Angora, wool and nylon and that total (with both skeins) I have about 250 yards. I cast on and started knitting. In the interest of full disclosure I should mention that I got this yarn from a friend's destash and she originally purchased it from Tuesday Morning, I think.
The reason I'm giving you full disclosure is that I started to have a few issues. The yarn was broken in quite a few places. I was able to splice it but I wasn't too happy about it. It was turning out pretty nice and fuzzy and soft and suddenly I noticed that my nose was even stuffier and I was starting to get itchy.
I think it was the yarn. I think I somehow have an allergy to it. What finally clinched it was that I ended up with a terrible headache. Now, here's what's strange. I've worked with angora before. I like angora. I think it's soft and lovely. I wanted to work with this yarn but I just couldn't. I'm wondering if there's some issue with the cleanser that's used to process angora commercially. Angora straight off the rabbit is fine but this and some roving that I was spinning at one time that was Cormo/Angora (and absolutely fabulous) gave me the same issues.
The headache is what really sealed the fate of this poor little yarn.

There it is. Glaring out from its plastic prison. Hah! I win. Except of course that I still didn't have a cowl. I was completely through the first chart too. That's 10 rounds of 130 stitches. (Oh dear, I just realized that was 1300 stitches. A few hours of my life, then it was whisked off the needles and imprisoned.)

Anyway, I still didn't have a beautiful cowl so I went back to the stash and came up with this:

Remember this? It was easy to find since it still wasn't actually put away. It's a smaller than 4 ounces skein of Gritty Knits Merino of the Month from November 2011. (It's less than 4 ounces because I took some of the spinning fiber off the braid and plan to use it for a different spinning project.) I just recently spun it into 246 yards of a squishy and soft sport-weight yarn.
I decided it was perfect and I cast on. I was going to knit myself through those first 10 rounds and go to bed but I couldn't sleep so I just kept watching video podcasts and knitting and knitting and knitting. By morning I hadn't had any sleep but I did have this.

A very lovely cowl. I literally put it on and laid down and got some sleep. When I got up I wove in the ends and took this picture for the blog.

Here's what remains of the yarn. I'm thinking it will probably end up becoming hexipuffs.
Back to the cowl. Here are:
The Stats:
The Pattern: Eleanor Cowl by Audrey Knight from Knitty
The Yarn: Gritty Knits Merino of the Month November 2011. Spun into 246 yards of sportweight yarn. (I have about 54 yards leftover)
The Gauge: I didn't measure my gauge, I just used the needles called for in the pattern and knit. I like it though so it worked out just fine.
The Needles: Size US 7, Size US 5 and Size US 4. The pattern calls for circulars in 16" of each, I didn't have 16" circulars of all those sizes and didn't want to knit it flat so I just used DPNs.
The Notes: This pattern was an absolute joy to knit, it turned out extremely lovely. The cowl could do with a good wash and block now but that would involve taking it off so we'll see how long it actually takes to get to that point. It's a bit taller than I would have thought, it sits quite bunched up on my neck so if I were to knit it again and I might, I think I wouldn't do that extra repeat of rows 23-49 on chart B.
If you are interested in a cowl at all, I suggest you check out this pattern, it's really quite lovely and well-written. It has directions for both knitting in the round or knitting it flat.
The Modifications: I did make a few modifications to this pattern. Any time there was a knit stitch in between a bunch of purl stitches or right next to a bunch of purl stitches, I knit it through the back loop to keep those knit stitches well-defined. I think it really added to the look of it and I'd recommend doing the same.

Slow Week, I'm Being Taken Down by a Cold

2012-02-29T16:01:00.003-06:00

Actual work on projects has been somewhat stalled lately since the cold I'm dealing with has made my thought process sort of slow, when I can actually think. It's just a cold, I just find myself sitting and staring at my hands holding my knitting rather than knitting it. I did manage to get a bit farther on my second Fiddly sock.

I actually finished the ribbing and started on the leg patterning. I still love the pattern but bright light is very helpful with the dark yarn and it has been somewhat scarce lately.

I also cast on the second Critter sweater.

It really doesn't look like much of anything yet does it?

As you may recall, I watch two little girls for a friend of mine. She is also a knitter and spinner. She's also quite an enabler. I knit a baby sweater for a mutual friend last year and she requested that I knit sweaters for her girls, that she calls Critters, with some of her handspun. When the second critter tried on the baby's sweater (which came out too large for a baby really as this critter is 2) she was so enamored with it, I could hardly say no. The first sweater is already finished. As a matter of fact, she wore it to church a couple of weeks ago. Since the lovely critter mama would like the girls to be able to wear them on Easter and Lent has already begun, I figured I'd better get a move on. I am figuring out this pattern based on the baby sweater pattern I used so I may end up doing some major ripping. Let's hope not.

You may notice that I'm not linking to the baby sweater pattern I used. I do have it on my Ravelry page if you really need to know, but while it has some interesting slipped stitch pattern rows, I felt the pattern itself was not particularly well-written. It was missing some vital information (like how long to knit the body and how long the sleeves should be) as someone who does not have children herself, that was kind of important in the pattern. I'm not going to bad-mouth the pattern but I will not recommend it and not link to it to keep others from running into the same issues.

I'm going to head back to the spinning wheel and hopefully finish the singles for my Merino today. I'd like to let them rest overnight at least before plying and that implies that I do actually need to finish them at some point. You know, if I can stop staring blankly at the wheel and actually make the treadle go.

In Which I Use the Word Discernible and Hope It's Spelled Right

2012-02-23T20:39:00.003-06:00

It turns out that tomorrow is going to be a bit busy so rather than waiting to blog, I decided to put a post up tonight. I'm slowly but surely descending into illness. Stupid nasty cold that's going around, nothing serious. I thought I was going to avoid it but it's coming and I know it. It's probably better that I post a little something tonight because of that too. Who knows how coherent I will be tomorrow.

The BFL yarn from yesterday is dry so I thought I'd give you all a look at how it looks now.

This is the Cloudlover BFL. I fractal spun it, splitting the braid in half and then half split again so the colors would twist around each other. In some places they line up and in some they barberpole in the most lovely way. I can tell the winter is starting to get to me because I love the parts where the golden/mustardy yellow line up with themselves. It makes me happy and I'm not usually a big yellow person. I guess I'm missing the sunshine.

I finished the first half of the Gritty Knits merino I was talking about as well and it occurred to me that if the other picture was terrible, why not take another.

This is the first bobbin of singles and the second half of the roving. As I said, I'm spinning it straight down the roving with no splitting. I am taking a smallish piece and drafting it well before I start on it though. You can see a little of the bright aqua blue on the bobbin. As you can see, it blends into a bright, bold pink with some brown and then into a sea blue-green that's quite lovely. I think spinning it this way will make a lovely almost gradient type yarn. I can't wait to knit a little shawlette or something with it.

I also made actual discernible progress on something I'm knitting. I finished a sock. Of course it's a single sock, but I did cast on it's mate so I'm working on it.

This is the first of the Cascade Heritage Handpaints (I believe) in the Gentlemen's sock in Railway Stitch pattern. I really like it so far. I'm not making any mods on this pattern except to make the leg a bit longer. I'm even using the size needle called for, even though I'm getting a bit tighter gauge than the pattern calls for. I love how it's turning out though and I'm really looking forward to having a lovely pair of dressy socks when I'm finally finished with these.

Here's a little bit closer shot so you can see the stitch definition a little bit better. They really are beautiful and a soft subtle shift of colors.

Well, I'm off to blow my nose 1200 times and watch a little television with my husband. Then, hopefully a good night's sleep.

Reappearing, just like Magic

2012-02-22T10:45:00.007-06:00

Well, hello again. I seem to have disappeared for a week or so there. Oops, I certainly didn't mean to, I can't even use the "being busy" excuse because I wasn't all that busy. I just sort of forgot.

I'll try not to let it happen again. I have been getting things done, although not much on the knitting front. I have knit on lots of things but very little progress has actually been accomplished. Really more than anything I've been spinning. I sometimes just get into that mode. I just want to spin all. the. time. You have of course, seen some of the lovely yarn that's been coming off the wheel lately. Things that I absolutely love, so I think that has encouraged me to keep spinning things, plus, I uploaded all my dyed spinning stash into Ravelry so it made me remember all the great things in that stash.

I finished some yarn. I can't find the picture of the original fiber but here it is on my Ravelry Stash page. I spun some nice, fine singles and navajo-plied it.
Isn't it lovely? I am actually having a hard time not winding this into a ball and casting on with it immediately. I both spun and plied it on my Matchless. I got 472 yards. Like I said, I think it's just lovely. Before washing it seemed a little overplied but when I twacked it a couple of times, it seems to have evened out quite a bit.

Inspired by this yarn, I dug out another lovely braid of Gritty Knits fiber.

This picture is really horrible but I didn't take a better one. It's a lovely bright blue on one end, a combination of pink and brownish in the center and a sort of sea green-blue on the other end. Since the colors travel along the braid and are so different, I thought it would be fun to spin it straight down the braid, navajo ply it and have a lovely almost gradient yarn to knit into a shawlette of some kind. I started spinning it but as I'm spinning it quite fine it's taking forever. Since it's taking so long, I needed something instant gratification (or as close as you can get in spinning)

I grabbed this lovely braid of Cloudlover BFL from my stash

Since I love how the colors look together I fractal spun it. That means I split the braid in half then split one of the halves again so the colors would mix up.

This is a really terrible picture of them during plying. They are moving, that's why it's a bit blurry. I really like how the yarn came out. It's drying right now so I will wait to take a picture of it. I planned to spin a chunky two-ply but really, the fiber drafted so well that I ended up with about 364 yards of sportweight. I'm not sure what it wants to be yet, so it will be marinating in the stash for awhile.

I did acquire something new this weekend too. (In addition to my fiber clubs which both arrived. I won't post pictures yet so I don't spoil surprises but they are up on my stash if you are interested.)
I didn't break the yarn diet, don't worry. I instead won a prize!

This lovely batt is from my friend Lisa's etsy shop (the shop has been on hiatus for awhile but she's wanting to get it up and running again soon so keep checking if you're interested). We had a Lord of the Rings party on Saturday (during which we watched all 3 extended edition Lord of the Rings movies, that was a lot of sitting)
and we had a "costume contest". That's in quotes because really it was Lisa and I that showed up and she was sick so I was the only one in costume. We had a lovely time anyway and had more snacks since there were only the two of us. I got to choose a lovely prize for having a great costume. It's a 2.05 ounce batt. I'm not sure of the exact content, although I think it may contain some silk and it definitely has something sparkly in it. I think the picture shows the colors pretty accurately and I'm in mad, crazy love with it. It too is going to hang out in the stash for awhile though.

Not much else has been going on, just a lot of spinning, some knitting and a fun party. I'll have more to report later this week since I'm going to try getting back in the habit of blogging at least twice each week.

Just a Quickie

2012-02-08T09:47:00.002-06:00

As I've mentioned, I haven't been feeling the love too much with my current projects. Rather than casting on something new, I decided to find an older UFO (Unfinished Object) and finish it.
And so I present: Hubby's Hideous socks.

Now that they're done they aren't as bad because I don't have to knit with the yarn, but they are not my favorite colors. I originally purchased the yarn, thinking it would have more of the pretty reddish pink in it. It doesn't. I decided to knit socks for the hubby because he doesn't mind colors like that. Okay, so getting back to an older format;
The Specs:
The Yarn: Red Heart Heart and Sole sock yarn. 1 Skein Navy Blue, 1 skein Rustica
The Needles: US 2 (2.75mm)
The Size: Men's Size 12 (12" foot)
The Recipient: The Jumping Bean (My darling husband)
The Pattern: Just a plain toe-up sock with coordinating heels and toes
The Notes: I wanted to use up the yarn that I didn't care for so I knit these two at a time from either end of the ball. Hubby's foot is 12" long and I had quite a bit for the leg. I'm impressed. I did have some of the Navy Blue left, I just got sick of the ribbing and the leg of the socks, including ribbing is about 5.5". I had one foot done through the heel when I picked these up and quickly finished them. JB says they are really comfortable and he likes them a lot.

So, do we like this format for finished items? Do we like how it's presented, that you get all the information in this format? Leave a comment, let me know.

Corriedale is Inspiring

2012-02-02T12:38:00.002-06:00

The other night I was watching TV with the hubby and thinking about knitting. I was just not loving any of my current knitting projects so I knew I needed something new. Maybe something quick and simple so I could get back to my other projects (which really are lovely, I just wasn't in the mood for them the other day.)

I grabbed some lovely yarn and cast on a baby hat I had been wanting to try. When I finished it, I also knit a quickie pair of booties to go along with it. The set is going in my gift box and someday some very blessed mom-to-be will be getting a great set from me!

Isn't it great? The hat is from Homespun Handknit and part of the Bouncing Baby Set. The booties are Oh! Baby baby booties pattern. I've knit the bootie pattern before (several times) They're super cute!

I've also been working on spinning. This week I finished some lovely Corriedale. I got the Corriedale fiber from out Spinning Guild's gift exchange at the Christmas party in 2010. I spun the almost 3 1/2 ounces into a lovely 2-ply laceweight.

I've thought about dyeing it but it just looks so lovely I think I need to knit it as it is.

Here's a dime for scale. I'm thinking twisted stitches would be gorgeous in this yarn. I'll have to try it out. I have 412 yards so I should be able to make something lovely. I'm off to search patterns now.

Beautiful Mittens Can Brighten up a Winter's Day

2012-01-26T15:48:00.002-06:00

Well my friends, I finished the Merino/Bamboo yarn. It turned out lovely.

I love how in some places the colors matched up and in some they didn't. It turned out really neat. I'm so excited for it to go to its new home too!

I've also been working on some mittens. I just decided I needed a project other than socks and these were small and relatively quick so they were just the ticket.
A friend loaned me her copy of the Fiddlehead mittens pattern. I dug in the stash and found some wonderful yarn.

3 skeins of Alpaca and Silk from Blue Sky Alpacas in a lovely undyed color. I wound off little balls of it and dyed them, waited very impatiently for it to be dry and knit these.

The best part about them? (Other than the fact that I dyed them) is this:

You knit basically a second mitten inside the first and then turn the second one inside out inside the first, making them double layered and super warm.

I love my new mittens, they make me smile.

One more thing before I sign off for today. As many of you know, I've been working at a local craft store teaching and moderating Knit & Crochet nights for several years, I've been going through some personal things, including some depression and anxiety and I just felt like I was putting too much of myself out into the world when I need to focus on myself and getting better so, this week, I quit my job at the local craft store. It was a very hard decision because I love some of the friends I made there but I need to focus on myself and getting to a healthy place before I can focus on others. I want to try to continue to blog as my knitting and spinning often keeps me going but I will be focusing on what I need first for awhile. Thank you, gentle reader, for understanding.

Mmmm, Chock Full of Orangey Goodness

2012-01-20T13:39:00.004-06:00

Remember that fiber that I showed off the other day?

Well, it's called Fruity Drinks by the Pool and it's from the Spunky Eclectic Club. I'm not in the club but occasionally will purchase something from a friend's destash when she isn't excited about it. This is one of those purchases. It's 60% Merino and 40% Bamboo. I think it's a lovely fiber, very silky and glides easily through your fingers to spin it. As a matter of fact, it seems to have turned into these singles.

I'm having the same issue my friend did with it though, I'm not loving the colors. I'm just not that enamored with them. The good news is, I asked a different friend, who commented on the fiber, what she'd like me to do with it. I'm going to 2-ply it for her and we will work out some sort of trade or something. Very exciting.

As I've mentioned, I've been trying to get my projects page more organized on Ravelry and have it reflect, at least in some small way, my actual projects. I think it's pretty much current right now. Sadly, the only thing I've added is socks. It's apparently all socks all the time around here. Just to prove it, here's another one.

This is the yarn. It's called Darling Clementine and it's Nom of course from the Gritty Knits Nom of the month club. It's not my favorite colors but they will be bright and soft and squishy and I think that honestly, if I'm going to stay in the Nom club, I need to knit with it once in awhile or I'm going to have a ridiculous stash of the stuff. I do love the way it's knitting up though.

As you can see (maybe) I'm into the gusset increases on the first sock. Isn't it full of delicious orangey stripes?

I've also been working on updating my stash on ravelry. I'm starting with my fiber stash only. I think I have it all updated now. At least with all the dyed fiber, although there could still be some lurking around the office, it's pretty messy in there right now. If you'd like to take a look, you can find it here. We will not mention all the undyed stuff yet right? Otherwise I might go a little bit cuckoo!

Anyway, I'm off to try to get warm and ply that Merino/Bamboo. It should be fun.

Finally the Green-Brown Yarn Story

2012-01-18T14:48:00.004-06:00

After spending Saturday relaxing at home, we ran all day on Sunday. First church followed by a birthday party for my husband's grandma. She's 90 now! It's sure amazing to see how her life has progressed and the friends she has made along the way.
Well, after spending all day Sunday running my darling husband and I seem to have picked up some sort of bug. Both of us have been sick for days. Since I've been lying mostly comatose in bed I haven't gotten a lot of knitting or crocheting or anything else done. (You should see the pile of dishes in the kitchen. It's scary. Anyone want to come and wash them for me? Please? No? No takers huh? I guess I'll have to try to find the strength somewhere.) Anyway, instead of new projects, I have a couple of things to show off from the last couple of weeks.

First, I have a lovely snowflake dishcloth I crocheted. The pattern was free on a display of Bernat Cotton at JoAnn Fabrics. I originally picked it up because my mom was interested in it. I thought if I crocheted it first, then when she inevitably calls with questions, I would have some idea what they wanted and would be able to help.

I really like the result though. It's pretty enough to be decorative and it almost makes me want to wash the dishes. Not quite though. I think I will have to make a few more to have around for dish-washing though. If you're interested in it, you don't need to trek out to your local JoAnn's though, the pattern is also available online here.

I did feel the need to start a new sock on Saturday too. I really don't know why, I have several going right now. I wound up some yarn I had spun last year. It's the Zarzuela Sock Stripes yarn. I talked about spinning it here. I cast on a sock from the toe-up and so far, I haven't gotten very far.

It's turning out lovely though and I'm very happy to be knitting it.

As promised, I also have a bit of spinning to show off. First, the singles I showed off last week. They plied up into some lovely yarn. I got about 246 yards despite swiping a bit of the fiber to put into other spinning projects. I'm not sure what it would like to be yet though. I find that's so often true when I spin something.

Speaking of spinning something, I finally have a photo of the cursed yarn.

I'm joking of course, I don't really believe the yarn is cursed but it has had some serious problems. I originally received it in July 2011 for the Gritty Knits Merino-of-the-month club. I liked the colors and the subtlety of it but I knew it wasn't going to be exciting to spin, it was too subtle for that. I started spinning it with the intention of navajo plying and I should have known it was going to have issues when it seemed to be taking forever to get though the fiber, the singles were turning out lovely until...
the thread of singles broke while I was spinning. Normally that's no big deal, you just find the end, splice it and keep going right? Except! I could NOT find the end. I searched and searched. I finally created an end by snapping the singles and kept going with the spinning, trying to forget about the issues it had. I finished the singles before Christmas, but set the bobbin aside in order to finish all the projects I had going for gifts. When I finally took it out and started plying, I found no lack of breakage and when I got to that same spot where the singles had broken, I had the same problem, not being able to find the end. I got so frustrated, I set the bobbin aside and finally had to have my friend WoolPrincess help me find that end. I managed to finish the plying and wind the yarn off with no further incident. It really is lovely yarn and I have a whopping 544 yards of Navajo-plied yarn. If only I can bring myself to get past its issues and knit the yarn now. It will definitely have a time-out for awhile and then we'll see.

In the meantime, I'm going to try to get a little something done. Maybe some laundry could get folded. Let's just ignore those dishes for one more day.

August Socks are Finally, Officially Finished

2012-01-14T18:05:00.002-06:00

I keep saying I will blog twice a week and then time just slips away and here I sit on a Saturday, still without a second blog post for the week. In yet another attempt to keep the habit going, let's start with a few finished things.

I've had these socks finished since August. They were my August socks after all. I forgot to take pictures of them though and so the project for them on Ravelry has been sitting neglected. Gathering internet dust as it were. Finally, in all their getting-slightly-pilly-already glory are the August Socks.

I really do like them and I think they turned out very well. If you'd like to know more about them, check out their project on Ravelry here. It will be updated with this picture and it's completed information later.

I've been focusing a lot on doing spinning lately. Almost to the exclusion of my knitting. I guess I just find the smooth feel of fiber sliding through my fingers to be so soothing, something I can almost do without looking, that I tend to get lost in it.

I finally finished plying the cursed Green and Brown Merino but it deserves it's own post. It has a whole story.

I also spun and plied a braid of pink and purplish merino that I wasn't too sure about.

I took some of the fiber out of the braid for something else and was left with some unusual colors as you can see from these singles. Pretty but unusual. I'll bet you can't wait to see how they plied up. Well, wait you will have to, the yarn isn't washed yet and I think it deserves at least that before it's blog debut.

Since I finished two spinning projects that means I get to start another right?

Mmmmm, lovely stuff, very soft and silky. Let's talk more about that later too.

I have Nothing Interesting to Say Here

2012-01-11T15:26:00.003-06:00

The last couple of days have been a bit crazy. I spent the weekend finishing up my family Christmas celebrations. We went down on Saturday and visited my grandma and then on Sunday we spent the day at my grandpa's house. It was a lovely weekend but it was not very conducive to knitting.

I have been working on getting some things done though. Here's the sweater for Critter #2 (the littlest lovely lady that I babysit for each week)

This is some Superwash Merino that her mama and I dyed at Shepherd's Harvest last year and then she spun into some lovely two-ply yarn. There's a full pound and so, when I finish the first sweater, I'll be starting on Critter #1's sweater. They are both very excited about their sweaters.
I'm on the first sleeve of this smaller one.

I would normally link to the pattern that I'm using but it's a free one on Ravelry and I don't think it's written very well. It's really more of a guideline for me so I won't encourage others to check it out. It's meant for a baby anyway and I'm knitting toddler size (by going up a couple of needle sizes, making the body and sleeves longer). The larger sweater will take some measuring and finagling before I can cast on. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I may be a little nervous that it won't come out the right size.

The Gentleman's Sock in Railway Stitch has been weighing on my mind as well. I threaded it onto waste yarn and tried it on. It's quite a bit shorter than the pattern calls for and when you stretch it to fit it around your leg, it shortens even more.

The verdict? I'm knitting more leg stitches. I'm really, really hoping I don't run out of yarn on the second sock. I think they're turning out very nice though. Although, I don't expect to have a pair of socks anytime soon.

Actually Sticking to one Goal

2012-01-07T09:32:00.002-06:00

I don't usually post on a Saturday, but I did promise to post at least twice a week so I need to actually get to it, especially since I just said it the other day.

Not much has changed on the knitting front, although I did take a look at my sad Ravelry projects page and discovered that I am seriously outdated. I haven't posted a picture of my August socks and they've been completed since, well, August. I'm wearing them right now as a matter of fact. Hmm, now would be an excellent time to take a photo. I should remember that and take one today.
I did start a new pair of socks, The Gentleman's sock in Railway Stitch from Knitting Vintage Socks. I think the pattern is beautiful. Although a bit fiddly, especially on tiny needles in dark yarn. I'm loving the socks but I have encountered a problem.

I'm knitting them on size 0s as the pattern calls for and I realized (now that I have knit all the way down the leg to where I should start the heel flap) that I'm not getting gauge. I should have used 1s. I like how they look in this gauge and I'm enjoying knitting it. I'm planning for the socks to be for me (because why knit for someone else on 0s) I'm pretty sure they will fit well at their current gauge as well. The issue I'm running into is that they have leg shaping and they are meant to be 8 1/2 inches before the heel flap and they aren't. They're about 6 inches. My question is this: To add more leg stitches or not?

Well, weigh in, what do you think? I'm guessing the only way for me to know is to slip the sock onto waste yarn and try it on, figuring out where the shaping sits and where it should sit. More on that next week.

In the meantime, Happy Weekend!

Goal-Setting

2012-01-04T13:19:00.003-06:00

I keep meaning to post but the time has just slipped away these last couple of weeks.

I had a wonderful Christmas with my in-laws, then a wonderful Christmas with my family. Then a crazy busy week and a lovely quiet new year with friends.

Now, as the calendar turns, I'm starting to look forward and figure out my goals for the coming year. Some are personal and I won't share them here, some are business-related and some, well, some are meant to be shared here. They are the fiber/yarn/knitting goals.

1. I would like to be better about blogging. I'd like to post at least twice a week, more if possible. Feel free to start bugging me if you don't see anything for a bit.

2. I'd like to get my projects page updated on Ravelry. It really helps me to realize just how much I have going on if I have it all listed and pictured. I've been really bad about that lately. Within the next week, I want to get a more accurate picture of my current works-in-progress and start getting my projects page more organized.

3. I'd like to get my stash listed on Ravelry. Completely. I want to get it all more organized anyway and while I'm going through it, why not take it out and take a picture, get it listed and then I'll have a much better idea of what I have too. That will make planning projects much easier as well.

4. I've signed up for a stashdown and so I'd like to focus on not purchasing more yarn and fiber for awhile. I am still going to continue my clubs so there will be a small influx of yarn/fiber (hopefully enough to take the edge off) but I think focusing on what I have will be a great idea. I have so much waiting for my attention and some of it is lovely stuff, so there's no reason to ignore it like I have been. Let's say I will not make purchases (unless it's needed to finish a project) until Shepherd's Harvest in May. Setting that goal will (hopefully) also help me to get a little money set aside to make Shepherd's Harvest a wonderful time to purchase some fun things!

I think setting these goals and actually putting them out there for others to see will help me to stay focused on them.

Meanwhile, I'd like to show off a couple of pictures of what I just finished.

This is 4 ounces of Polwarth from CJ Kopec Creations. I actually bought it from a destash awhile ago. The other night when I needed something to spin, I went for the lovely, bright package with this in it. It was a joy to spin, quick and easy because it was so well prepped (and not by me). I got about 400 yards of 2-ply. I love it. I tried to get the colors to line up for the most part and ply with each other so in most places they do. I think it's wonderful, although bright. I have enough for nearly any one-skein project but I'm not at all sure what I'd like it to be yet.

(The color is more accurate on this second picture)
It seems so bright and too beautiful for socks. There's some wonderful project just waiting in this skein, I'm just not sure what it is. Maybe it will have to marinate for awhile until I figure it out.

In the meantime, I leave you with this:

A picture of a wonderful winter afternoon at my parents house. Hand-knit socks up on the hearth, knitting in the lap and a lovely fire. Life doesn't get much better than that.

Happy New Year to all my lovely readers!
P.S. What goals do you have this year?

Weather Delay means you get the Cute!

2011-12-12T15:41:00.002-06:00

I was going to share some pictures of my lovely shawl that I received from my Plurk Swap buddy today but the gray weather and lack of light is not very conducive to taking good photos and the beautiful shawl really deserves better than that.

Instead I've decided to show you a picture of one of the cutest things ever.
This is hubby, crocheting. He's working on an undisclosed gift for an undisclosed recipient. He's helping with the Christmas gift creating this year.

Isn't he cute?! (I'm pretty sure he has no idea I have taken this picture since I didn't use flash. that's why it's not super bright either. It is super cute though!)

Plurk Swap from My Side

2011-12-09T15:00:00.003-06:00

Since I'm heavily ensconced in my Christmas knitting there isn't too much for me to blog about right now. Although, there will be at least a few things I can show off because I know the recipients won't be stumbling near to get a peek. That comes later though. For now, let's take a trip back in time. (It won't take long, just a little jaunt.)

A few months ago I joined the Plurk Swap and then sort of forgot about it. Well, I remembered to look for fiber in Wisconsin and I remembered to spin it into some lovely laceweight but when people started posting about how they had started their shawls and weren't we getting close to the deadline, I panicked slightly, pulled myself up and finally made a decision on the pattern.

I knit the Holden Shawlette. The pattern was in my recipient's queue so I knew she would like the pattern at least. The start is just stockinette and it flew by. Of course by the time you get to the patterned section the rows are longer so it seemed to take longer. I always think that's partly because they are patterned too so I need to pay more attention. I finally cast off and blocked it. It turned out lovely.

I think half of what I liked about it was how the colors moved through making almost stripes in some places and smooth transitions in others.

The patterned section was actually pretty fun to knit but the picot bindoff took some fortitude. You manipulate each stitch several times to make the neat little bumps. I did not pin each one out although I think it would have added something.

Then I started assembling all the other bits and bobs to include in the package. We had a spending limit so I tried to be reasonable but I made a few things too so I could send off what I thought was an awesome package. (Hopefully as good as the awesome package I had received.)

My swap buddy has received it already and (I hope) liked it so now I can blog about it all I want.

One more picture, just because I can!

I really like the way it turned out and I actually had a lot of fun with the swap. Right now there's some real life stress going on so I don't know that I would rush right out and sign up for another swap but I certainly would consider it if another swap came along.

Hmm, I never posted about what I received did I? Well, maybe that will have to be an upcoming post. In the meantime, I'm going to try to get my Christmas lights working so I can decorate. So far, it isn't looking too good.

Distressing Paper

2011-11-30T14:54:00.004-06:00

I've been talking about doing more artwork and occasionally mentioning it on the good old blog here. Today, since it's my birthday and I'm not feeling too hot, (Bad headache for days and fighting a cold, somehow related probably) I decided to do a little painting and I started thinking about texture. I love texture and something that looks interesting on an art journal page. I had a great idea and I tried it out. It worked really well so I thought I should share.

Please note:

I have not looked to see if others have done this technique and do NOT claim to be the first, I just know I thought of it and did it today and had tons of fun!
If you are a fiber person and are therefore not interested in artsy paper stuff, scroll down, there's yarn at the bottom of this post.

I took a break from my art journal today to play computer and suddenly remembered a super fun craft I did as a kid. You take a regular piece of paper and distress it. I thought it would be super fun for art journaling or any art really so I made a little tutorial. Enjoy!

Start with a sheet of paper. I used an ordinary sheet of printer paper. Nothing special at all.

Then I tore a section out so it wouldn't have perfect and straight edges

As you can see, I'm working on my dining room table since my office desk is a mess so I've laid down a sheet of wax paper to protect the table cloth. I recommend it for this even if you don't care about the underneath surface. You'll see why.

Next, crumple it up into a little ball

Now unfold it and flatten it out (it doesn't have to be perfect at this point)

The reason it doesn't have to be perfect is because you're going to repeat these two step a bunch of times. Crumple, flatten, crumple, flatten until the paper gets softer and well worn.

Can you see the little holes worn in the paper? That's what you're looking for, a very stressed paper. It's much softer like a tissue almost and as you can see, very distressed.
Now you want it to be fairly flat, not that you need to really flatten it but lay it out so it isn't folded over and such.

Now, make a wash with watercolors. Use any color that you like of course, I'm using a nice bright cerulean blue. Brush it onto the paper using a nice sized brush, as you wet the paper you will find that it sticks down a bit and flattens out, just keep smoothing the paper with your brush as you paint it. You may find it absorbs more paint than you expect, just keep loading your brush and brushing it on.

I recommend the wax paper or something else because the paper is pretty fragile at this point and leaving it on the wax paper to dry helps keep it from totally falling apart. Depending of course on how much you distress it.

Add other little bits of another color if you wish and then press a paper towel onto it to absorb some of the excess moisture.

If you need to or want to, flip the towel and press it down again. Leave the paper to dry on the surface and check out what you made!

Here is the one from earlier with the one made in the tutorial. (I apologize for the bad lighting, dim evening in my living room)
As you can see, the paint absorbs more in the creases giving it a very cool mottled appearance (especially if you add bits of another color) and when it dries it has a very interesting texture that's not totally perfect and flat. It reminds me a little bit of handmade paper in that it's totally unique and unusual.

If you're into art or art journaling at all, try it. It's super fun!

I promised you yarn too didn't I? Here is some BFL I just finished spinning the other day.

It's 8 ounces of Frabjous Fibers in Moulin Rouge and I got about 538 yards. I think it's about a sport weight 2-ply. I like it but I'm not completely in love with it so I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet. I was thinking socks, (Knee-high of course) it might have to marinate in the stash for a bit before I decide.

Startitis Strikes Again

2011-11-17T16:45:00.004-06:00

I finished my handspun Gritty Knits socks in the October 2011 colorway and lest you think I'm slacking, I'm already spinning another colorway. It's coming along but it takes time that I haven't had too much of lately.

The toe-up heel flap went okay but since these were a little bigger gauge than I usually knit I think the flap itself came out a little short.

The socks themselves came out a bit short too but I love them anyway. The ends aren't even woven in but they're on my feet.

What I should really be doing is knitting up some Christmas presents but I'm not. Rather than do that, I'd like to cast on something new. I've got some lovely NOM lying around begging to be something and I am fairly itching to cast it on but I'm trying to resist.

Since the startitis virus is going so strong all my other projects do not sound appealing at all and as such, I'm not getting much done on them either. I should just cast on some quick little thing and get it done so I can get back to gift-knitting. After all, I need to get something done.

A Story of Socks

2011-11-09T15:28:00.004-06:00

I like knitting socks, I may have mentioned this a time or two. I like how portable they are. I can shove a partial pair in my purse (almost any of the many purses I own) and whip them out to knit whenever I have a minute. Plus, I love designs on socks, lace, cables, interesting things that take time to knit but that means I usually have several pairs going at once.

Right now however I seem to have a problem. I seem to have a few too many pairs of socks going at once. How many you ask?

Well, let's take it one at a time. I like to have a plain pair of socks in my purse for odd little moments I find when I need a bit of knitting.

These fit that bill nicely. They're just plain old socks knit out of some handspun dyed by my friend HandOverTheWool. I love how they're turning out almost rainbow-ish. Not at all expected.

I recently decided I should have a plain pair for reading too. Like sitting around the house reading a book or something. That's what these are for:

Although I did take these to the movies the other day because the others were at the heel and I couldn't knit that part in the dark.

Oh, you noticed that little tabbie huh? It's a tag from a bag of bread or whatever. I use it to hold the tail (there's usually a good sized one since I like the long-tail cast on) while I knit and keep it out of my way, then I can undo it and weave it in later. If you ask people, they'll save them for you. I have lots. My mom usually gives me a big handful every time I go there.

I was also doing a self-imposed sock club. Using yarn I had been meaning to knit and patterns I had been wanting to knit, I matched up twelve yarns with twelve patterns and set them aside in January. I was pretty good about it but sort of got stalled in September. Where did I leave off? Right about here.

It's pretty sad that a half a sock is all it would take for these to be finished.

They're turning out pretty nice too. I love the stitch definition. I didn't even cast on socks for October mainly because these weren't finished but also because the Tour-de-Sock was starting.

Oh yeah, that brings me to another pair.

This pattern is called Calable. It's the first pattern in the Tour-de-sock. Where's the other one?
Um, yeah, here.

Still yarn. I didn't get very far on these. I'm not sure what it is. The pattern is okay but I'm not loving the yarn in it or something. It's even sparkly. How do you not love knitting it?! I don't really understand it myself.

Anyway, then there was this incident with this fiber last month that I couldn't resist and started spinning right away and I sort of accidentally cast it on too.

I got the first one past the heel (I'm doing toe-up but trying to do a heel flap heel on it. I've had troubles with it before but I think it may work out this time. It fits my foot at least.) and took the other end of the ball and cast on the second one. I'm making my way slowly up the foot on it.

Then there's the real trouble. Christmas knitting!

Sorry, did that scare you? I'll give you a minute.

Yeah, these are supposed to be for Christmas.

As you can see, they aren't very far yet. Let's not discuss how close Christmas is okay?

We will also be ignoring socks that are hibernating including the entrelac ones and the pair I started on New Year's Eve.

Do you see the problem? I have so many and I need to get to work. Yet, it's NaKniSweMo and I could be knitting a sweater. I may have accidentally wound some yarn for that today as a matter of fact. Oops. Not sure how that happened.

If you need me I'll be over here pretending that Christmas is coming in about 7 months okay?

To Knit a Sweater

2011-11-02T17:25:00.002-05:00

I'm considering doing NaKniSweMo again (that's National Knit a Sweater month for the uninitiated) but I'm just not sure. I'm almost done with most of the things making me crazy with knit-stress.

I'm out of Sock Sniper, I've pretty much given up on Tour de Sock because I just couldn't keep up and I'm making speedy progress on the shawl for the Plurk swap. I didn't even try knitting socks of the month for October because I knew it wasn't going to happen so I've got 3 patterns for socks, matched up with yarn waiting to be knit but I haven't even dragged them out. I'm thinking I may put them off until next year or something.

I don't think I'm going to do much of anything for Christmas knitting this year so I think I could swing a sweater but I just can't seem to decide which sweater lot of yarn to knit and what pattern to make it. Maybe that means I shouldn't commit to it huh?

Anyway, I'm loving the yarn and how it's knitting up for the Plurk swap shawl but I don't know if my swap buddy wants to know so I'm keeping it under wraps. Makes for very boring blog posts though.

Photo Walking

2011-10-28T17:47:00.004-05:00

I don't talk about it a whole lot but I consider myself an artist of sorts. I know there are those out there who think you are only truly an artist if you have "paid the rent" as it were with your art. I actually have. I went to school for Graphic Design and worked for a time as a Graphic Artist.

It was during that time in my life that I knew I always wanted Art to be a part of it. Time of course moves on and you don't always have that choice, life tends to get in the way. I still find myself yearning for something sometimes though, that artistic seed never goes away and unless you nourish it and allow it to grow, it becomes a little hole in your soul. That's my opinion at least.

Last weekend it was my brother's birthday and I traveled to my parents' house where we spent the weekend.

The birthday boy. We had a short lumberjack competition and here he is mid-swing. This one turned out REALLY well. I love it!

It's hard to squeeze anything into that time with nieces, nephews and cousins coming and going but while out in the woods on the 4-wheeler, it struck me how beautiful the sunlight looked streaming through the trees. I had to capture a small portion of that and bring it home, something to keep my spirits alive during the winter and so, the next afternoon as the sun was setting, I took a walk in the woods with my camera. Here are some of the pictures I took.

I love the pink berries in the foreground of this one.

Although there are trails in the woods, I tried to capture just the natural parts of it.

Fallen trees, that were fallen naturally, and little touches that make you feel almost like you're completely alone out there.

This is my favorite of the ones I took and the first one, as a matter of fact. I love the sunshine streaming in, it almost makes me feel it on my skin.

Then of course, I had to have a picture of the fire, as the sun set and we all settled in for the evening.

You should note that I don't have a fancy pants camera. Just a little Canon but I set it to landscape for the woods photos and quick shutter for the fire and my brother and I love the way these photos turned out.

I May Be Addicted

2011-10-19T16:12:00.004-05:00

Almost everyone that knows me knows that I belong to Gritty Knits Merino of the Month club. I talk about it all the time. Often because I'm spinning the lovely fiber I've received of course. Let's ignore that for a moment though and talk instead about the NOM club.
NOM is sock yard. It's not just any sock yarn though. It's amazingly wonderful sock yarn. The fiber content is 80% Merino 10% Nylon and 10% Cashmere. As if that weren't enough, the yarn itself feels amazing. So soft and smooth and lovely! Well, a few months ago our lovely Gritty Knits purveyor started up a NOM club as well. I couldn't resist at least trying it 0ut and I'm so glad I did! Every month you get a skein of NOM in that month's colorway. I have loved every one. Some of them I've had to think about what they'd like to become and (very rarely) do I think that it just isn't my colors. I love almost all colors and that really helps of course, but honestly I think the color sense in my fiber and yarn shipments are just amazing. I just can't say enough good things! You want to see what I'm talking about?

This:

Is October's NOM. It's called Autumn and it is! It's all the lovely shades you think of in Autumn without being garish or overdone. It's not the first colors I would have chosen but I think it's lovely and subtle anyway. I am thinking a lovely shawlette would be so nice in these colors. As soon as I finish some of the MANY other projects haunting me right now of course.

What I really want to mention though is this month's Merino. It is amazing. I was so excited to pull it out of the package.

I can't explain it. It's deep rich black and navy blue with hints of soft aqua and occasional bits of white thrown in. I was in love from first glance! It arrived (with my NOM, they get shipped together, saving on postage) last Thursday and my love of it sort of explains why it doesn't look like that anymore.

It doesn't look like this either really, it looks like this:

A really terrible picture of finished yarn.

This one's a little better only because you can see the yarn better. The flash washed out the colors entirely but it's 296 yards of soft, sproingy heavy fingering weight to sportweight and I'm so excited to knit with it that I cannot believe it still isn't dry! I'm fighting the urge to wind it into a ball damp and just start. Yes, I know there are tons of other WIPs glaring at me but...I seem to be helpless to resist the charms of this amazing fiber turned yarn. I just love it. I want it to be my own. Good thing it is huh?

Really, Truly Done

2011-10-17T15:47:00.002-05:00

Do you ever finish knitting something and while you know you would love if it were completely finished, for some reason, you don't finish it?

I have a tendency to do this a lot. I joined a SAL/KAL for a lovely Cowl from the Zarzuela group. I knew it would be wonderful to have it truly finished but it took me months and months to finally do the simple little task of sewing the buttons on I finally did that today.

Isn't it lovely. It started out as a simple braid of fiber, then I spun it into a lovely two-ply yarn. I love the way the colors blend in this process. I knitted it into a lovely cowl and now, finally, here it is. Finished, done, complete. Buttons and all. I actually might add another button, making it three total to keep the flaps from well, flapping. I'm wearing it now and it makes me feel lovely and cozy and warm.

I didn't have much time to procrastinate on the other project I've finished.

Isn't it sweet? I knitted this lovely baby sweater over the last couple of weeks for some friends from church who were due to have their baby. If it weren't for the fact that I set it aside for a bit I would have finished it right after starting. I knitted it with yarn I think is extra for the sweater project I'm planning (Cascade 220 in Pacific Heathers) I think the color is quite lovely and would have worked for a little boy as well but they had a lovely little girl. I whipped up the sleeves on Thursday and blocked it Friday so I could give it to them on the day of her baptism, that was yesterday. I sewed the buttons on yesterday morning. It was cutting it a bit close but it will be quite awhile until she fits into this lovely little sweater. It came out to the size the two-year old I babysit wears. As a matter of fact I had her try it on and she didn't want to give it back!

Whew! Two projects finished. Now I'm off to work on some store samples for Crafts Direct. I get to try out the ruffling yarn. It's all very exciting!

Spinning Frantically

2011-10-13T15:03:00.003-05:00

Lately I haven't been doing a ton of knitting. Well, I should amend that. I've been knitting a lot (and crocheting really) but not finishing anything. It's very difficult to have anything interesting to talk about when you don't have finished objects.

I did manage to finish my Travelling socks though.

They are VERY fraternal but I love them anyway. I knit on them over about a year whenever I was in the car (as a passenger) and whenever I was out somewhere that wasn't home. I didn't work on them with any sort of speed because I love that they travel with me and get knit in all kinds of interesting places. They were knit in Duluth while camping and at the Air show last year, again in Duluth for our Knitting class with Three Irish Girls and in Wisconsin. Then this year they spent a good deal of time in the armrest of my hubby's car and finally made another trip to Wisconsin where they were finished. Lots of memories and beautiful socks at the end too! Really they should have their own post, of all the amazing places they've been but I really want to talk spinning today.

I've been doing a bunch of spinning lately and almost none of it has been posted about.
This is the lovely Spin-Along with the Zarzuela group. It started like this:

(This picture is awful because it was taken with flash at night) You can see though that it's 3 braids of 2 ounces each. Two are semi-solid and one is made to stripe. You chose your colors and your fiber, mine is BFL, and the lovey Zarzuela dyed it for you. I have a purpley-pink with a lovely grey. I spun and spun and spun. (This took a good long time!) Then I plied it up and ended up with this:

A lovely 3-ply yarn, the color is much more accurate in this picture. The goal was to spin each braid onto one bobbin each and then ply the three together. That's what I did. I really love the look of the finished yarn but I'm a little disappointed in my spinning. I only got about 366 yards out of 6 ounces! I can usually get much more yardage but I love it anyway.

After that, I needed to get my Plurk Swap fiber spun for my swap buddy.
If your name is Sairy, look away!

Last Chance.....

I chose a lovely (BFL again) fiber in Wisconsin and set about spinning it. I ended up with this:

A beautiful laceweight yarn. It's a two-ply and I got about 600 yards. Now I need to find a pattern and get knitting it! I'm so excited about it and this yarn is so pretty I'm so tempted to keep it for myself.

Finally, I took advantage of CJKopec's Free Shipping sale and made a couple of purchases. One of them was this beautiful Superwash BFL. It was a little different than I was expecting when I got it and I just wasn't sure how it would spin up.

I know fiber can look way different after spinning though so I took a chance and set to work.
I made a two-ply because I thought the yarn would look lovely with the colors all blended together.

It came out lovely! It's somewhere between a sport and a worsted weight at 280-something yards. I'm not sure what it wants to be yet but I think it's gorgeous!

I did start on my Christmas knitting but I haven't gotten very far. Good thing I decided not to do a whole lot of Christmas knitting this year!

Here are some socks for my Dad, knit two-at-a-time with some lovely Regia Kaffee Fassett Design Line. They are going to be fraternal though because they started at a different place in the yarn which I didn't realize at first. Oh well, he should enjoy them anyway!

September Recap

2011-09-30T13:24:00.002-05:00

I can't believe what a slacker I've been in the blogging department lately. UGH! I finally am here and getting something written about what I've been doing though.
So, here we go.
On September 18 it was Worldwide Spin in Public day. Spinners all around the world went out to public places and spun to bring attention to their craft. That it's still done, that it's amazing and fun and you get to make yarn. I did too!
My knitting/spinning group actually set up ours as a coffee crawl. We started on one side of our city and moved from coffee shop to coffee shop across town (at intervals in case anyone needed to meet up with us at some point, we did have a plan) and brought lots of attention to our group and to spinning.
We spun at the coffee shop in our library, at the coffee shop in the mall, all over and we had a blast!
Here's a taste of our group:

This was also our lunch stop so most people got some food too.

I love how people brought all different sizes and styles of wheels and how rapt the attention of the kids was. Although the people in the mall stared at us skeptically most of the time.

I'm also participating in Sock Sniper this year and my target received her socks so I can finally post the picture I took.

It's really awful actually but I had forgotten to take one so I snapped a quick pic in the car with my cell phone before I dropped them in the mail. They turned out very nice and I'm so happy my target received them, likes them and they fit. Bang bang.

Now, I'm off to knit a baby sweater for a friend from church who is so close to having her baby. Tour de Sock begins tomorrow too so I may have to dig out some yarn to wind.

The Wisconsin Adventures of William

2011-09-16T14:43:00.003-05:00

As you know, earlier this year, William traveled to Shepherd's Harvest Festival with me and had a little fun. He met some sheep

and in general had a pretty fun time.

Then we decided to go to Wisconsin for the Sheep & Wool festival again and he started bugging me to go along. He's a pesky little traveler and wanted to see all kinds of things. Luckily we drove into Madison and while looking for a certain yarn shop so Wool Princess could get the one more skein of yarn she needed to finish a sweater, we saw all kinds of things.

The capital. Pretty cool building with carvings on the top like greek figures. We even drove across a lake.

This is apparently a natural lake that they created a road across.

There was lots more too. Like all the places where you can rent bikes near this lake. It was a pretty cool trip and eventually we did find the yarn store.

We headed back to Jefferson and William even got to shop at the Piggly Wiggly.

Not every little knitted doll can say that.

Placated, we headed back to camp and I wisely left the little guy in the tent while we did a little shopping.

Overall, it was a great trip despite the 7 1/2 hours in the car each way. It didn't rain this year and we had wonderful weather for sleeping in a tent. I can't wait to do it all again!

Pretty in Green

2011-09-14T15:06:00.003-05:00

Have you ever knit something that made you question your sanity? Then, when it was finished, did you step back and look at it and think; Wow, how did I do that? This project was one of those for me.

It started simply enough, with The Loopy Ewe's final camp project. (May I just add that I love how this picture looks like it's blowing in the breeze, which is totally was. I love it!)

The goal was to knit something using at least 800 yards of yarn.

My biggest struggle is always to choose a pattern and the yarn to go with it. I finally settled on Dream in Color Baby which is laceweight in Happy Forest. It looked like a lovely deep rich green, almost a forest green on my monitor. When it arrived it was lighter and brighter. A bit of a shock but I loved it. I ordered two skeins since the very generous 700 yards/skein would not be enough for this project. I knew I had been wanting to knit a larger version of the Gail shawl ever since I finished my lovely little shawlette version. I set to work and started out quickly and it was going very well. Until. Well, it got huge.

The rows were over 500 stitches apiece at the end there and it took some focus and fortitude to knit or purl through one. I found that with this yarn I couldn't just zone out on the purl rows either because the flat nature of it on the needle made it too easy to cross a yarn over with a neighboring stitch without meaning to. I had to pay attention all the time. I had blocked a small portion of it on the needles when I first started to check that I was liking the gauge and I measured it and determined that I would knit 15 repeats of the chart. That should mean it would be 60 inches wide. Well my friends, it grew.

It's bigger. I still love it, although it's bigger than planned and I can't wait to show it to absolutely everyone I know.

I apologize now. You will definitely get sick of having it thrust in your face. I just can't seem to help it though. My husband is already sick of looking at it.

I wore it to Knit & Crochet night last night and wove in the ends (after blocking so they would have less chance of coming out) and just loved the feel of it around my shoulders.

My emotions with this project definitely ran the gamut from: Oh, no big deal, I'll whip this out no problem. At the start to: What the h*&% was I thinking? When those rows got so long and now. Now my friends, I can't believe it.

I cannot believe that this lovely, amazing, epic green shawl, dripped from my needles, that I created this with some sticks and a large ball of string. It's somewhat awe-inspiring. It makes me feel like I can tackle the world.

At least the world of knitting.

I promise to tell you more about Wisconsin later this week but I felt like this shawl deserved it's own post. It definitely deserves it's own veneration in my book. Thanks for bearing with me while I waxed poetic about it.

All Packed

2011-09-08T13:10:00.000-05:00

I'm starting to feel a little like a nomad. I didn't even put my suitcase away from my trip down to my parents' house and now I'm ready to head out the door again. This time I'm heading to Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival. You may remember that I went last year too. I'm going again with my same lovely friend WoolPrincess. We are camping again and it's going to be a great fun, fibery time again.

What's different this year? Well, we have a bigger tent, I'm packing a second sleeping bag, I don't wanna be cold again and I have a special little travelling companion.

You may recall that earlier this year I knit a Prince William doll for our local paper's story on the Royal wedding. This spring he travelled with me to Shepherd's Harvest Festival and got to meet some sheep.

Okay, for some reason blogger absolutely refuses to upload this picture so you will have to wait and see it another time.

He's coming along again and I can't wait to see the trouble he gets into this time.

I'm Not Disappeared, I'm Still Here

2011-09-06T14:32:00.001-05:00

I have been so busy lately that I completely forgot to blog.

I promise I will return very soon with your regularly scheduled blog posts.

(hint: a baby sweater made it off the needles and the green shawl is getting close!)

Blocking or Warping

2011-08-17T19:13:00.003-05:00

I decided to do a little blocking last night to see how my Gail shawl was coming along. I wanted to make sure I was liking the gauge enough to continue. The results?

I Love it. I think it's turning out lovely and I love that the bubbly little goofy knitting I was getting turned into this.

I love how magic blocking is and how good this lovely yarn looks in this pattern.

I may not be able to stop taking pictures of it.

I have now unpinned it and sadly set it aside temporarily because this:

Is a baby blanket I'm knitting. The lovely little baby was born already and I am lucky enough to be travelling to see her for the first time tomorrow after critter sitting (the baby in question lives with my cousin and her husband. She will for about 18 years.). I can't wait but I have a small problem. This is a square shawl from this book. (Feb. with all the baby stuff) and I figure with the gauge I'm getting that I would like each of the 4 sides to have about 200 stitches. I have 74 stitches per side right now. Plus, I'd like to do some sort of edging.

Anyone else see the problem? Yeah, I'll just be over here warping the time-space continuum.

A Philosophical Discussion

2011-08-15T13:28:00.004-05:00

Today is the 15th and that means I can start Camp Loopy's Project III. I'm using 2 skeins of Dream in Color Baby (linked to the Loopy Ewe's page since they are the wonderful founders of this Camp) in Happy Forest. I LOVE it so far. The colors are wonderfully subtle but enough to keep my attention. I'm knitting the Gail Shawl. This project you just have to use at least 800 yards of yarn. I have 2 skeins of this yarn and it's 700 yards/skein so I have PLENTY to knit a lovely big shawl to wrap up in.

Here is my start. It doesn't look like much of anything yet.

You may remember that I knit a smaller version of this shawl, a shawlette earlier. I really liked the pattern and was only disappointed that I couldn't knit it larger because I didn't have enough yarn. Well, this morning as I was sitting here knitting and trying to get back into the pattern, I was thinking.

I thought about the last time I knit this pattern and I made a mistake. There are a couple of rows where the pattern calls for a double yarn over in the center to start two repeats. I don't like the look of the double yarn over. I think it makes too large a hole so I would do a single yarn over and then purl into the front and back of it on the wrong side. Something went wrong when I was quite far into the pattern and my attempt to fix it looked awful, I had to rip and reknit. I managed to do it with very little struggle and I was thinking of it this morning.

You know how when you start a new project you think about how you could execute it absolutely perfectly? With no mistakes? I was daydreaming about that while purling across a row and thinking about the mistake I made in the other version and how I could avoid making mistakes in this shawl. I thought about a lifeline and I nearly laughed out loud.

Remember back a few years ago when I was knitting Mystery Shawl 3? I hated doing those lifelines but I was so scared I would make a mistake and not be able to fix it! I did MULTIPLE lifelines. I marked carefully on the pattern where they were located so if I should have to pull back to there, I knew where to start again. The thought of doing them this time was ... funny?

I was momentarily confused and then I started thinking some more (I know it scares you every time right?) about knitting and how far I've come.

Those of you who know me well, know that I have been knitting for a long time. I learned when I was 10 from my great aunt. She taught me to cast on and to knit while visiting one day and then she left. She taught me no more after that, even when I did see her again. I spent several years knitting and ripping and knitting and ripping and then figuring things out for myself. I managed to figure out purling and backward knitting and all sorts of things. I eventually found a book and continued my knitting education with learning to do other things like other cast ons and lace and...so many other things.

It got me thinking about how long it has been since I mastered all those basics and yet, I still find things that challenge me. Not only that but just a few years ago I was scared of lace, scared of losing my place in a pattern, I've come so far since then, knitting and frogging with little care and I wondered about my lovely readers.

What have you knit that even a few years ago would have scared you beyond belief? What still scares you? (Steeks, I haven't done any yet. I should really try it someday.) How far have you come in your knitting and how far do you still have to go?

Finally a TdF Wrapup

2011-08-08T13:12:00.003-05:00

I know that Tour de Fleece, like the Tour de France has been over for a bit. I'm just now getting to the point where I am posting about my spinning. It's sort of sad really. At least I'm getting to it now.

I started thinking about TdF earlier this year and trying to figure out what I would like to spin. I had lots of lovely things in the stash but nothing was calling out to me. I was in the mood to knit a sweater. A handspun sweater would be absolutely lovely but nothing I had was enough to spin for a sweater so I set out on a mission. I had purchased some lovely Frabjous Fibers BFL earlier (like a year earlier, at least) and I loved my Chocolate Cherry colorway but it was 8 ounces and what can you do with 8 ounces? I decided, since I had seen it at Shepherd's Harvest last year, to go on a mission to find another 8 ounce braid of it this year, then I would spin it and ply the two together to avoid any issues with dyelots not being the same.
I scored big time when I found a second braid almost immediately.

Here they are before I started pulling them apart and spinning them. You can't tell very well from this picture but there are some subtle differences in the two braids. I spun up a lot of singles.

Here are just two of the bobbins. As you can see, they're pretty full and I had 4 bobbins this full when I was finished.
I plied and plied and plied and ended up with:

This much yarn. The three big skeins are pretty nice and the smaller skein on top is a little thinner. It was spun first and then left over after the second bobbins were emptied so I wound it into a ball and plied it on itself. The total is: about 1300 yards. I was going for a fingering weight but I came out with more like a sport weight. I love the yarn and I cannot wait to find something amazing to do with it.

In addition to spinning all this lovely stuff, I've been knitting some handspun. Remember this skein?

It's my Cloudlover BFL/Silk. I cast on some plain socks while we were in the play so I would have something simple to work on during rehearsals when I was waiting. I was past the heel turn on the first sock and working down the foot when the play finished so I whipped up the ending to the first and whipped the second up as well.

There's nothing quite like a lovely pair of handspun socks is there? Well, not to me anyway.
They're unique and interesting and very lovely.

People seemed very intrigued by my picture of myself all muddy last week. There is a story behind it. My brother got a new 4-wheeler and so, while I was down at my mom's we found some time to get together. He showed me lots of different trails he likes to ride on while I rode my parents' smaller 4-wheeler. we found some mud and decided to "cool off" and have some fun. Eventually my BIL came over with his 4-wheeler too and we had a ton of fun getting thoroughly messy. The cleaning up was not nearly as fun. Here are some action shots of my brother and BIL getting thoroughly dirty.

I don't get to do things like this very often so I really enjoy it when I do have the time.

Stay tuned to find out if I can finish this:

and it's mate before Camp Loopy III starts.

Vacation. Well, sort of.

2011-08-05T12:55:00.002-05:00

Thoroughly stressed and overly busy has made me a bit of a crab lately so I decided it was time to head down to my mom's for a few days. I just needed a break and it was a great opportunity. I had just finished up working at Vacation Bible School for my church and Knit & Crochet night was off because they were remodeling the coffee shop. I had several days of nothing stretching before me. What did I do? I filled 'em up!

First let's talk knitting. I managed to finish my Camp Loopy socks before I left but I was so anxious to get going that I didn't blog them or anything until long after I'd been back. Here they are in all their glory:

Yarn: Colinette Jitterbug 400 in Purple Passion 171.
Pattern: Eunice by Cookie A. From her book: Sock Innovation
Needles: US size 1.5s
Recipient: Me! I'm not giving these lovely things away.
Notes: I added a third chart repeat to the leg, making them longer than the pattern called for, I was a little worried about having enough yarn because of this but I had plenty left. There is a correction to the heel flap chart so if you have the book and knit the socks from it, look it up. Otherwise, I love the pattern, it was a challenge to do some of the cabling but they turned out so lovely.

Closeup? Why, of course!

As you can see, there's some lace and lots of lovely cables in this sock. It's not for the new knitter but if you have an adventurous spirit and love socks, these are for you.

I have already chosen the pattern for my third project and ordered it. I will tell more about that later, when it arrives.

Now you want to hear more about my trip to my mom's?

This was Saturday. That's all I'm gonna say for now.

Going Batt-y

2011-07-22T12:28:00.002-05:00

I've been watching the Gritty Knits group pretty closely on Ravelry because I'm the moderator and all the amazing batts people have been making are so inspiring that yesterday when I was over at a friends' house. (A friend who has a drum carder, she's a great friend to have. Hah!)
I dragged along some fiber to be carded into some lovely batts.

Earlier this year I attended a sheep shearing day at a friends' farm and came home with two lovely little Shetland fleeces. I only washed one but it turned out so lovely, if a little bit full of VM. Shetland is like that. They like to roll around in hay and such. Anyway, I separated this lovely little fleece into baggies based on color and hand carded a little of it but mostly just ignored it. Until yesterday. I dragged all of the baggies out and stuck them in my bag and headed over to this lovely friend's house.

This is the result of my work over there. I call them Surprise Batts because they have a little bit of a surprise. I made one normal batt then carded up a batt for her of some Blue BFL waiting around. Then, without cleaning off the carder, I started up with the Shetland again. That means, there's little bits of blue in this lovely grey and I added some Purple Flash Angelina so I ended up with something that looks completely normal and ordinary from the outside but very interesting if you look closer. I made 2 two-ounce batts so I'm greatly looking forward to spinning it up into some wonderful two-ply sock yarn. I just need to clean off a couple of bobbins first.

I may not be an "official" member of that group but I did share these lovely batts with them so they could see what I was inspired to do.

Well, now I'm off to keep knitting on my Camp Loopy Project. I have one sock finished and the second on the needles. I think I should have plenty of time to finish them, well, as long as I keep working on them.

Monkeying Around

2011-07-15T16:23:00.002-05:00

Last week was my nephew's first birthday. I decided it would be fun to make him a little something. A stuffed animal came to mind and so I set out to find something to crochet. I found this really adorable monkey pattern. They call him Monkey so I thought it would be perfect. I dug some acrylic out of the stash. It's been in there for awhile for a reason.

The monkey is made is a bunch of pieces so I got started and quickly whipped them all up.

I just love the pre-assembly pictures. It looks like a monkey massacre. Cracks me up every time. Then I started assembling. I have to say I found the assembly difficult. Sewing things on (and getting them exact and straight) with just a few fingers inside made it a real challenge. Many of my pieces ended up a little bit wonky but that adds to the little guy's charm. I used Safety Eyes to keep them from being a choking hazard but the other features are sewn on with black yarn. Here I present:

Monkey with Bananas

He does have a tail, it makes him sit up very well. I added the belly button and I'm so glad I did. My little nephew was beeping his belly button before we even left! He turned out very cute. I got to give him to my nephew and I guess he loves him. He snuggled him up that night and when he got up he wouldn't get out of his crib without him. I guess he's a hit!

I also finished my first project for Camp Loopy and it's blocking now.
What's next?

Mmmm, purpley. Wait and see.

Camp Loopy

2011-07-12T13:55:00.002-05:00

Recently I sort of lost my mind and decided to join up with Camp Loopy. Camp Loopy is a series of knit-alongs for the summer, coordinated and announced on Sheri at the Loopy Ewe's blog. The Loopy Ewe is an amazing company and I really love them and their customer service. I just seem have underestimated how much I actually have going on. Yes, again.

The first project was a two-color shawl or scarf. I chose Daybreak and ordered up the pattern right away, then I went ahead and ordered two skeins of Fleece Artist (linked to the Loopy Ewe) I was a little later than everyone else getting started but I'm coming along.

As you can see, I was well into the striped section here and now I'm actually into the solid edging section. A few rows from done with it actually.

That's good because the deadline to finish is July 15. It's coming up fast.

I'm hoping to get done pretty quick here and get my pictures posted because I already have the yarn picked out for project 2 and I'm getting very excited to get going on it. Of course I can't start until July 15 though. I am combining project 2 with my Self-Imposed sock club so I will be using other yarn than what's planned in order to make it a Camp Loopy project.

Meandering Through the Summer

2011-07-06T16:15:00.002-05:00

I can't believe how long it's been since I blogged. I have been knitting away but keep forgetting to come check in and let you know I'm alive. Well, here I am. Alive and kicking.
As proof, I offer you my feet. In socks of course.

Here are my completed June socks. I love them so much I wish I could wear them now even though it's much too hot for socks right now. The pattern is Meander and the yarn is Mountain Colors Crazyfoot (The colorway is Apple Green and boy is it ever).
I bought this yarn last year while on a knitting retreat in Duluth with my AMAZING knitting group. We took a class together and spent a night in a hotel, staying up spinning and knitting. That's when I finished my Nightingale socks, with my lovely knitters around me. We of course had to foray into the wilds of the Duluth Yarn stores and I found this lovely green skein of yarn and knew it had to be mine. I thought the tight twist and subtle shading would lend itself very well to almost any pattern and so, I was very excited when I settled on Meander for this lovely yarn. I loved the knit, well, except for that part where I had to reknit a whole leg and heel because it was too small but my love of the pattern and yarn almost made me forget about that.

I crossed the cables on the feet in opposite directions so they will lean toward each other when worn. No one would probably notice it but me, but I love that they are mirrors now.

I finished them before June was done and found myself not reaching for July's socks immediately. Why?

Well, I joined Camp Loopy and this month's (well, starting July 15) goal is socks or mittens with cables. I thought, since Husbeast and I are busy with our play that I should keep my sanity and combine July's sock with the Loopy project. I found a pattern in my queue ready for Self-Imposed sock club that has cables and ordered new yarn (what a stretch, I know!) I'm currently waiting for it to arrive and knitting furiously on my first Camp Loopy project in the hopes of getting done on time. What is it?

You'll just have to wait and see.

Something Blue

2011-06-22T11:01:00.002-05:00

I recently found myself in need of a new spinning project so I went digging in the stash and came up with a lovely blue Merino from Gritty Knits. Are you tired of hearing about them? No? Good. I'm in the Merino-of-the-Month club with them and so I have an abundance of amazing Merino from them and I love spinning it so when I found the braid of September 2010 floating around in the stash and took a look at its amazing blues I knew I had to get it spun up.
I started with a 4-ounce braid (which I forgot to take a photo of. sorry.) and split it the long way into about 6 pieces. It naturally wants to split this way so it's easy to do and ensures lots of color movement in your finished yarn.

With the grey weather lately I've struggled to get decent pictures so I've been using flash but that doesn't always give me the best quality. This photo is pretty accurate color-wise though.

I wanted to do something different so I drafted out each of these balls into a soft fluffy cloud.

Prince William really liked it. I wanted to make it a little easier to spin though and somewhat portable which a big pile of fiber really isn't so I wound it onto an empty bobbin.

It was very fluffy and much more full than this at many points. I put the bobbin on the built-in lazy Kate on the front of my wheel and gently tugged at it to get more as I spun along. Drafting like this really made the spinning quick and easy and made it even more joyful to spin.
Here are the singles, ready to be plied.

I did a simple two-ply because I knew I wanted the lovely blues and bluish-greens to blend together to make a lovely finished yarn.

You know what?

It did. Here is the finished yarn. It's about 412 yards so a nice fingering weight and I love it! It's colors are so similar that it makes for a very soft and subtle variation. It would work great for almost any project, even one that needs a semi-solid so I can't wait to find just the right thing to knit with it. In the meantime, it can be art on my coffee table.

Photo-Lacking updates

2011-06-16T12:27:00.003-05:00

I don't really have any cool pictures to show you today. No pretty socks in the grass, no fiber waiting to be spun or already spun fiber.

I have been knitting but I haven't really finished anything. I seem to have a whole bunch of things started that need just a few hours of concentrated effort to get them finished. I just don't seem to have that whole "concentrated" thing. I will work on something for a little while, then get bored and start working on something else. I may be drinking too much coffee but that's just a theory.

I've been spinning too. As a matter of fact I finished some lovely blue yarn but I didn't take any pictures yet. I guess I'm sort of slacking in the blog department right now.

I am working on my June socks. The pattern is Meander and I think it's lovely. The charts look very intimidating but once you get the pattern established, its basically just to show you how to move the cables over so it isn't as bad as it looks.
They've had their foibles though. I was past the heel turn and working on the gussets when I decided to try it on. Yeah...It didn't fit. I ended up frogging and starting over (this was after realizing at row 52 that I had messed up the ribbing pattern and purled when I should have knit. I laddered it down and fixed it.) I got to about row 35 this time before finding another mis-stitched ribbing stitch. I fixed this one as well. I just yesterday managed to get the heel turned and I'm slowly working down the foot. It's a good thing I'm loving the chosen yarn and the chosen pattern so much or I'd be bitter. Let's not discuss this when I'm bitter during the second sock okay.

Well, I'd better go and get some knitting actually done. Then maybe I'll have a few pictures to show you in the next few days.

A Lovely Handspun Project

2011-06-08T12:13:00.006-05:00

I've been doing quite a bit of spinning lately. It just seems relaxing when you've had a busy day, or it's too hot to move.

I signed up for a SAL/KAL recently through Zarzuela. This is the Polworth in the Dahlia colorway that I got from her.

Beautiful right? I sure thought so. I spun it up as quickly as I could but then I had to wash it so I couldn't cast on the KAL pattern right away. It's the Dahlia Cowl. I couldn't wait to cast on so I dug out some handspun that was ready to go.

In February as a part of the Gritty Knits Fiber of the month club, I received this:

It looks like candy hearts right? I liked it but I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it.

Eventually I decided to spin the singles pretty loosely and quickly. I also specifically split up the roving (Fractal spinning) so I would get different colors plying together.

It came out very nice and I plied it up right away (I tend to be impatient to go from singles to Yarn)

The yarn is pictured here on the bottom. It's with another skein I spun similarly. (Another Gritty Knits Merino of the month braid, for May)

Since this yarn was ready to go and I was desperate to try out the pattern and get knitting and it's not recommended to spin with wet yarn, I wound it up and cast it on.

It was so interesting and unique. I absolutely love it! The colors shift subtly all the way through. I made it a little wider than the pattern called for so I decided to just keep knitting. The end result?

Lovely. I decided that since this one is wider and I'm going to knit it again with the Dahlia yarn anyway that this doesn't really need to be a cowl. Instead? It's a table runner. Hah! I don't think that's what they had in mind with this pattern but it looks so pretty on my coffee table, I can't resist.

In other news, this:

Is for June's socks, they are cast on and moving along nicely. More on those later.

(I have no idea why all the text at the beginning of this post is underlined. I can't seem to figure out how to fix it. Anyone? Help?)

Victory is Mine!

2011-05-31T10:29:00.002-05:00

I am triumphantly posting because,

these are my May socks. I actually finished them on Thursday. It's so exciting to have them done with plenty of time when I was feeling so much like they were hanging over my head like an axe waiting to drop.
Wow, it really says something about how unhappy you are with a project when you compare it to an axe huh? But it doesn't matter because they are done, done, done. The pattern is Spring Forward and the yarn is Sock Ease and I like the pattern a lot. I would definitely knit it again. I've used the yarn before and I think it's a decent hard-wearing yarn but I did not like the two together and I did not appreciate the ripping incident. I'm glad to see the back of these socks.

And, it gave me time this month to finally decide to finish these:

These are my lovely handspun socks and I sort of made up the pattern. I made them toe-up and knit from both ends of the ball of yarn to maximize yarn usage. I actually didn't use all the yarn though. I have lots left. I decided not to play the crazy game where you start knitting up the leg, trying to use all the yarn and end up with socks halfway up your calf that won't stay up to matter what you do so you never wear them.

These socks are my new love. I made the May socks larger than my feet so they can be a gift so I've been wearing these lovely handspun babies almost exclusively for the last couple of days. Who can help it? They are squishy and springy and lovely.

Tomorrow marks the start of the June socks but in the meantime, I'm going back to bed, I'm not feeling well and so, I'm staying in today. No Knit & Crochet night tonight and I'm not happy about it, it would be nice to get out but I'm opting for sanity and rest. Think healthy thoughts.

An Interesting Query

2011-05-24T12:23:00.003-05:00

You get a blog post two days in a row?! Don't die of shock!

Today I'm winding some yarn to take with me to Knit & Crochet Night. I'm casting on the Felicity hat in this lovely Melena Yarn that was a gift from a friend.

(You can check it out in my stash if you'd like.)

The query I have come up with is as follows, what motivates you to knit something that you've had in your queue (Ravelry or otherwise) for awhile?

I was gifted this lovely yarn last winter, it's been sitting around since then. About a month after I received it, I decided the lovely drapey quality would work really well in this hat pattern but I haven't knit it. It's just a hat, it will be quick and easy so what's stopped me?

Why have I started it now? Well, someone who comes to Knit & Crochet Night (that I moderate and help with) wants to knit a slouchy hat and this pattern is perfect. I'm getting something knit that's in my queue and simultaneously helping someone else to work through the pattern.

So, why do you knit something that's been in the queue for awhile?

Socks and more socks

2011-05-23T13:24:00.008-05:00

Lately I've been going a little crazy with all the socks I have on the needles.

The good news? The April socks are done and have fallen into the LOVE category.

I really like the pattern Peaks 'n' Valleys and I've knit it before. The last time it was a cotton yarn and this time it was Panda Silk. Both times for some reason I chose a yarn without stretch but I love this pattern so much (simple to memorize and unique) that I really should knit it again with a lovely cushy wool. I even love that I can wear the socks like above or:

Fold down the cuff to make lovely little ankle socks, much more appropriate with sandals and capri pants (which I live in during the summer).
I didn't love working with the yarn though and I didn't love having a time crunch to knit socks on size 1 needles. I do love the soft drapeiness (is that a word?) of the finished product. I love the soft smooth feel as I slip them on too. All in all, I love the socks.

Why, you may ask, am I focusing on socks that I have finished? Well, because this:

Is all that's done of May's socks. Yup, we're looking at single digits of days left this month and yet, the socks aren't even close. Why? Frogging incident. I was knitting them on 1s as well. The yarn is fine, what can I say, I thought I had forgiven the 1s for April's "Incident". But when I had turned the heel and finished the gussets, I tried it on, as I often do and it was a no-go. It didn't fit. I could get it on, but not very well and it was snug. In a not very nice way.

I'm not thrilled with this yarn in this pattern anyway (Spring Forward which is a lovely pattern but I don't think works as well as I thought it would in Lion Brand Sock-Ease) They are just not calling to me. I'm thinking these may end up being a gift and I can't give socks that don't fit. That would just involve me knitting them again really. And um, OUCH.

What would I rather be working on?

These of course. Some lovely handspun yarn from Funky Carolina. I received this lovely superwash Merino roving at our spinning party last year and spun it into a lovely 2-ply. It was so unusual and I liked it so much that I immediately spun it into a ball and didn't even measure yardage. I'm knitting socks from both ends so I can make them the same length even though they are quite fraternal I love them. They are smooshy and soft and they have a simple and neat looking little cable up the leg. What's that? You can't see the cable?

Here you go:

Don't you just want to grab it and start working on it? But I'm trying to be a good little knitter and finish things, the WIPs in this house are threatening revolt and they greatly outnumber me.

Speaking of finishing things, I never got a chance to blog about the Royal doll I knitted for the local paper. Let's ease into it though and I'll show you just this for today:

It looks like a sort of scary dolly massacre doesn't it? Yup, this was just before I started sewing him up.

More about him later. In the meantime, back to socks.

Whoops, what was that? Hmm, I'm not sure how that got in there, I'm a good little knitter who's going to finish her socks. I'm not going do crazy things like start something else. I'm not sure who you think I am but I'll just be over here waiting for it to be time for me to go teach and knitting my yellow May socks. Yup, May socks all the way. Shhh.

Knitting and Spinning Finished Things

2011-05-17T11:08:00.005-05:00

I've been pretty bad about actually blogging but I have been knitting. I offer proof.

This is my new shawlette. It's knit from one skein of Ella Rae Lace Merino. I absolutely love it. The pattern is called Gail a.k.a. Nightwings. The pattern took a little bit of knitter's intuition because I didn't feel the directions were really clear but it is an easily memorized pattern that looks amazing. I loved the yarn, I loved the pattern and I would definitely knit this again. I do wish it came out a bit bigger but I love it anyway. (That just means I have to knit it again right?)

I've also been spinning. There's been quite a bit of that to avoid knitting on my May socks, I think, because they are irritating me. Let's not talk about them today then. Instead let's talk about just one of the spinning projects.

This is BFL/Silk purchased from Cloudlover at Shepherd's Harvest Festival. (Oh yeah, we haven't talked about that either. We'll have to do that later.) I spun it into singles.

Specifically splitting up the colors so they would blend when it got plied into:

This lovely two-ply yarn. It's about 352 yards and I love it. I think it turned out beautiful. Of course, I have no idea what I will knit with it yet so it can go and marinate in the stash for awhile until i decide. The handspun stash is getting larger though so at some point I'm going to have to start choosing some projects for the handspun.

Popping in for a quick hello.

2011-05-02T13:45:00.002-05:00

Since it's a new month already and I haven't posted in awhile. Again! Sorry. I'm so out of practice with posting now that I seem to be way too easily able to forget.

I have cast on the May socks and I'm knitting away on them. What does that mean? The April socks are probably done right?

Well, it's true, they are. Finished on the 29th even! That's pretty amazing actually because I spent a bunch of time finishing this up:

It's my March 2011 colorway from the Gritty Knits Merino of the Month club. It was so bright and pretty that as soon as it arrived I pretty much tossed everything else aside and started spinning it immediately.

I have about 518 yards of beautiful light fingering weight in a 2-ply. I can't wait to start knitting with it but really I have a bunch of other socks on the needles, including my May socks so I need to work on some other things first. *sigh* That's always the way isn't it?

Well, I'm off to teach tonight so I'd better head out to finish getting ready. More to come, including Finished April socks very soon!

Knitting News

2011-04-15T12:43:00.002-05:00

Hello beloved readers. When I realize how long it has been since I last posted, it makes me want to cry. I really do try but I seem to keep falling into bad habits and forgetting all about my poor little blog.

The project at the end of last post is indeed socks. They are the Naiad socks and they were a challenge. I'm not posting a picture of them yet because they are on time-out. Technically they were indeed finished during March and kitchener stitched all the way up the side of the sock. Yes, that's a lot of kitchener stitch. No, I don't want to talk about it. They were a little too long and I wasn't very happy about it but I decided to block them and take pictures for here anyway. Yeah, they grew. I'm very, very unhappy with them now. Hence, they are in timeout. Eventually they will probably be ripped back and reknitted but I need a break.

Instead I'm knitting diligently away on my April socks and I'm slowly but surely getting there. I'm not done with the first like I hoped to be by the middle of this month but I am still working and still have hope that they will indeed be finished. What's been keeping me from finishing you may ask?

Why Prince William of course. Our local paper is doing a story on this book and the wedding and people around our fair city have been asked to knit the various characters for this event. Silly me, thinking it would be a good advertisement for the classes I teach I thought I would volunteer and I am knitting the groom. I'm getting there but it has lots of little fiddly bits that take up more attention than my stuffed sinus self can manage sometimes. I often find at the end of busy days these past few weeks I am just zoned out in front of the TV rather than zoning out with my knitting. Hopefully, that will improve soon and I will have more things to show you.

Until then, Knit on!

Self-Imposed Sock Club Update

2011-03-23T14:59:00.002-05:00

You may remember earlier this year when I set myself up on the Self-imposed sock club. I diligently worked on my January socks only to finish only one beautiful Entrelac sock. I still intend to go back and finish the second sometime this year but it definitely wasn't done in January.

Then, I cast on some socks for a friend in February. Alpaca yarn in a very pretty dusty green. This picture is more blueish than the yarn actually is. It's Frog Tree Yarns in sport weight and I was excited. I thought I could easily finish sportweight socks on 3s in February, even though the month was short.

They were finished last week.

They turned our really nice and will be gifted this weekend. However, I didn't finish them in February either. Oops. At least the pair is done now.

What about March you ask? Well, let's not talk about it yet, it's not the end of the month after all.

But, I did cast on something. What do you think it is?

It's some gorgeous Malabrigo sock. I love the colors and how they are lining up. I'm very excited.

Lessons Learned

2011-03-18T07:19:00.002-05:00

I promised the story of the socks awhile back and so, here it is.

Here are the socks. They are knit with Crystal Palace Yarns Maizy Print. (It's color Meadow Mist) It's really not my favorite yarn to work with. It feels as though it should have some stretch but I found that when I worked with it, the stretch did not make a bouncy yarn to work with but rather stretched out and then was tight and not at all giving. I also ended up ripping and reknitting these several times and the yarn did not hold up well. It was very splitty and I am very glad to be done knitting them.
The pattern is Serpentine socks from WendyKnits book Socks From the Toe Up. Although part of what kept me ripping and reknitting was the desire to knit them from the top down which they are now knit from the top down.

You may be asking yourself, then why do these ordinary-looking socks have "quite a story all their own" they sound ordinary enough so far. Well, it goes back to when they were just yarn. I tried knitting with it and didn't like the result so they were shoved into a pile of works-in-progress. Then they were ripped and started again in something else. Again, ripped and restarted as serpentine socks. Then they were ripped and restarted as top down serpentine socks. Then, finally one whole sock was finished but it was set aside. I knew I wanted to do a self-imposed sock club this year and this single sock along with a couple of others was bothering me. Why have single socks lying around. Finish the pair and enjoy them right?

I chose this one to get finished first. I dug it out and found the charts and examined the sock and made notes about how to knit it to match the first. I started knitting and remembered why I had put it away. I didn't like the yarn, I didn't like the colors, I didn't like anything about it. (I do think they will be nice cool socks this summer though) I had decided to finish them though and if you know me in person you can attest to this, I'm sort of stubborn. I was going to finish and so that's what I set out to do. When I was on the foot of the second sock, I tried on the first, just to look at the pattern and admire the sock, maybe to encourage me to finish a little bit too, and I realized something.

It was short. Now I don't mean that I couldn't get it on, it stretched and fit just fine but my toes felt squished and if there's one thing I can't stand it's squished up toes. Like if your toenails are too long (and I don't let mine get very long) the socks won't fit. I knew what had to be done. I was going to have to finish the one I was working on and rip back the toe on the first and finish it properly, otherwise it was going to bother me. So, I diligently worked on the second sock, knowing what was coming though. That rip and reknit of the toe. I finally, finally finished the second sock and proceeded to unpick my woven in end, my lovely kitchener stitch and my well-made toe. Then, I diligently put the stitches back on the needles. It was then that I noticed something. Something...wrong.

If you look at the chart for the Serpentine socks and if you have the book you should, they are beautiful and fun to knit, even in less than appealing yarn. Anyway, there are purl stitches at either side of the repeats. I knit the second sock with 2 purls in between the pattern, just like the charts would call for. I knit the first sock with only 1 purl in between. I cut that extra purl out. My little knitting world twisted a bit as I contemplated ripping that first sock (or the second really) out entirely and reknitting the whole thing. I just couldn't do it. So, I finished the first sock...again. I just left it. These socks might be forever tainted in my mind because of this and I don't feel like they are good enough to give away so they sit, curled up in my sock drawer looking all innocent. Maybe I'll wear them, maybe I won't. Only time will tell.

What did I learn from all this craziness?
A) If you change a pattern that's beautiful and well-written as it is, you invite your own trouble. You have been warned.
B) If the yarn doesn't work out several times and you start to hate it a little bit, it's okay to give it away or even throw it out if you don't want it anymore.
C) I cannot give away a gift I feel is inferior, even if I hate it with the burning fire of a thousand suns and I don't want to look at it.

In lighter new, I went to sheep shearing last Saturday at Ramsey Family Farms and came home with something:

You'll have to hear about it later though. I have class handouts to make. whew!

Official

2011-03-07T16:22:00.002-06:00

Well, it's Officially Official. I will be teaching at Shepherd's Harvest this year.

I can barely believe my name will be listed along with some of the amazing ladies who are also teaching.

My class is Crocheted Edgings and will be on Saturday afternoon.

I should be around the festival most of the day.

In the meantime, I need to go lie down, I have a horrific headache turning migrainey so I'm going to go lie in a quiet, dark room.

Resurfacing

2011-02-28T16:08:00.004-06:00

Things have been pretty insane around here and unfortunately that means the blog got a wee bit neglected. Time to dust off the cobwebs and get something posted right?

Well, the knitting hasn't been languishing too much, despite the crazy schedule. As a matter of fact, in order to maintain my sanity, I've been trying to finish a few things that have been marinating in the work-in-progress pile for awhile.
I finished a pair of socks but they are currently in the wash because I've already worn them. I am usually so excited to have new socks that they don't make it to the wash before they get worn at least once. Trust me, it's better if you wait and see these clean. They have a story all their own.

I also dug out my texting mittens. The ones I was knitting to match my clapotis. I had one completely finished and the other one just needed the outer mitten section. My hands were cold, why was I waiting?

I absolutely love them (now that they are finished. The end-weaving, even though I did it as I went for the most part was still pretty daunting)
They look all normal here but...

They have a little secret.

I also went crazy for lace-knitting, because when you have very little knitting time and your schedule is crazy what you really need is intricate, beaded lace.

So here we have it, a first glimpse of my In Dreams shawl. I'm in the middle of Clue 2 right now and so far the pattern is absolutely amazing. The beads are fiddly of course but well worth the work to get them in.

This one is a little bit more accurate color-wise. The yarn is dyed by my wooly friend Lisa. Her shop can be found here. It's an amazing laceweight in golden yellows and I love it. It reminds me of sunshine and springtime.

I am pretty crazy about the idea of the shawl thing too because I started a plain garter stitch one too with some handspun I had lying around.

So far it's turning out great. It's close to half done. I have 8 ounces and almost 4 have been knit into it now.

Whew, that's enough for now so I'm off to spend a little time with my poor neglected spinning wheel too.

Spinning and Handspun in the New Year

2011-01-18T13:22:00.003-06:00

I've been doing a little spinning in between my knitting. Mostly knit a row or two, spin for a few minutes. Or, occasionally hubby will want me to watch a show I need to pay attention to and I will get half an hour or even an hour to spin.

Doing little bits like this means eventually you do finish things but mostly, they take a long time. Like this:

Please welcome to the stash about 498 yards Superwash Merino fingering weight. I purchased this from a destash and started it way back in November. I was really hoping to do something different, like a two-ply but when I saw the amazing purples and dusty blues in this fiber, I knew I wanted to keep them separate so I spun it fine and navajo-plied to keep the color progressions. As you can see from the tag it came from Fiber Optic yarns and it's their colorway Sweet Georgia Brown. It's going to marinate in the stash for awhile but eventually it's going to be amazing stripey socks, I think.

I was so excited to finish my Sweet Georgia Brown that I immediately went and grabbed something else from the stash and started it up. Again, I originally thought of doing a two-ply because I wanted the colors in this gorgeous fiber to really blend and become something else. I love the roundness of a three-ply yarn though so I ended up splitting the fiber into three pieces, spinning singles and doing a traditional 3-ply.

Please welcome to the stash: Nanners, about 254 yards worsted weight BFL/Silk from Funky Carolina (also a destash purchase) I love the beautiful shine you get from the silk and the amazing bounce from the BFL. It's not the colors that immediately appeal to me but I do like it. I'm not sure what it will become though. It needs to marinate for awhile.

Having finished those two things though, I needed something else to put on the wheel. I went diving in the fiber stash and came up with this:

Something completely unexpected. Superfine Merino/Alpaca in a gorgeous red that shades into a deep maroon offset with a bright, teal blue. It's beautiful and I'm very excited to be spinning it. I'm going to keep you in the dark about what it will become though, you know, just in case it becomes something else. Don't expect to hear about it too soon though, it's going to be on the wheel for awhile.

Baby Knitting Update

2011-01-14T12:49:00.002-06:00

I've been a super slacker on blogging this week. Mostly because I'm working hard on knitting my Lothlorien test-knit and it looks exactly the same only slightly longer.

Have you been on pins and needles to see if I finished the baby knitting on time?
I'm sure you were. Not really, but here's an update anyway.

Here are some adorable booties. The picture isn't great but I can't get my photo editing software to work so I'm stuck with whatever I get with the camera. I picked some super cute yarn and knit them up in a single day. The yarn I picked for the jacket is "similar" colors but not the same. What are the odds the mom will put the baby in both at the same time anyway?

Now, about that Baby Surprise Jacket

Hahaha, I love this step. It looks like a stinray. It is finished though. You can tell because,

Ta-Dah! It turned out super cute. I haven't actually gotten these gifts to the intended recipient yet though because I was still sick on Sunday and my hubby quarantined me so I would rest.

Now, here's a question. I knit the buttonholes into the little sweater but I'm thinking of gifting it sans buttons. I thought I'd leave it up to the mother if she wants buttons or not. What do you think?

Perfectly Reasonable

2011-01-06T10:07:00.004-06:00

I realized on Tuesday that I'm invited to a baby shower that I'd like to attend. The shower is on Sunday. What do I do when I realize this? Go to the yarn store of course.

Some of my knitting friends think this is utterly batty. Why don't you just go and buy something off their registry. Well, I could. But honestly, what's so crazy about turning this:

Into a Baby Surprise Jacket by Sunday? I've already finished booties that are similar colors but don't exactly match. I forgot to take a picture of them and my camera batter is dead as a doornail. It'll have to wait.

I'm well on my way to getting a baby sweater though. See.

This is me about to start the increases.

In other knitting news, I have started a sock from this:

A lovely Christmas gift from a friend who has an etsy store here. It's a sock for in my purse when I'm running around. The colors are much more purple and beautiful but again, camera battery was dying and I needed to finish up quick. I'd show you the sock but the battery died as I was uploading that picture.

Well, I'd better go get more knitting done. Only a couple of days until Sunday.

Here we go 2011. Bring it.

2011-01-03T14:35:00.002-06:00

I flipped the calendar over to a new year just a couple of days ago. I don't think it has really sunk in yet. I haven't done much to make it feel like a new year yet. Sure, there were a few "resolutions". No, I'm certainly not going to post them out here for all the world to see.

The one thing I've really done this year is finalize my choices for my self-imposed sock club. The ever lovely Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, also known as the Yarn Harlot, did this last year and I loved the idea. I had sock yarn stashed and patterns I was wanting to knit for several years and as soon as something new and shiny came along, I was abandoning them to move on to the new thing. So, let's dig through the stash and find yarns waiting to be knit. Then, let's pair them up with beautiful patterns and make a yarn club just for me.

Long about #6 or 7 I ran out of patterns and yarns waiting and so I started looking through pattern books and my queue on Ravelry, trying to discover what I was going to fill it out with. I briefly considered doing an every other month club and just choosing 6 but that doesn't give you 12 pairs of socks at the end of the year. I did manage to finish up my list. Bagged up the yarns and the patterns (some still in books, I'll get to copying soon.) and cast on for my first sock.

Entrelac Socks from Socks, Socks, Socks.
I had never knit Entrelac before so I was a little nervous. So far, it seems to be going well.

The yarn I originally planned for these socks didn't work out so I ended up grabbing a ball of Noro Kureyon from stash and using both ends of the ball.

Here's a taste of what's to come.

So, what did everyone else do for the new year?

Captain America is Awesome!

2010-12-31T15:55:00.002-06:00

I was hoping to post a little something today to end out the year with a good note. Not that it won't be a good note anyway, we are going to 2 parties tonight. I kinda wish we were staying home cause the weather is "frightful" as they say. But, I've baked a beautiful chocolate cake for party 1 and made some asian coleslaw for party 2.

Just how beautiful is the cake?

Okay, not that great to look at but it will be super yummy. That's a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. Perfect for the "frosting queen" hostess of party 1.

Oh, some of you came here for fiber content? Hmm, look at this:

It's Fiber Optic Yarns "Sweet Georgia Brown" from a stash sale on Ravelry. 4 ounces of the most gorgeous, richly colored Superwash Merino I have seen in a long time. It's much richer and darker in person but of course more difficult to photograph as a result. This is half of it, split lengthwise and drafted, spun into singles. The second half is started and if I ever finish I'm planning to navajo ply it.

Anyway, I'm posting to end the year with a bang. Happy New Year to you and yours!

P.S. The post title is what my husband told me I should post about when I asked him today. I should really know better by now. He is quite the comic book nerd.

It's a sickness really

2010-12-29T15:02:00.003-06:00

Is the burning question on your mind? Did I finish my Christmas knitting?

Well, let's do the math.
One woven scarf, Two Ribbed Knit hats, A total of 3 double-knit hats because one had to be knit twice. Okay, this 12 Days of Christmas thing isn't gonna work.

Ahem, starting over.
1 woven scarf
2 ribbed knit hats
1 pair felted clogs
2 double-knit hats, even though one had to be knit twice
1 knit washcloth to go with body wash/lotion
1 pair handspun socks
1 pair men's worsted socks
2 pairs baby booties
1 handspun, hand-dyed knit scarf
9 crocheted scarves
1 knitted cowl

That's a grand total of: 22 handmade gifts.

Whew, here they are. (Please note: Not all of them are finished in this picture but I had to start wrapping so I have a few things not done.)

Did I finish though? Well, .........
Yes. Monday night I cast off the last thing, before doing our gift exchange with those people. It's been a wild ride.

So, now you are probably wondering what I'm up to next right?

Lothlorien is back in view. Coming along nicely too. It really is a beautiful pattern.

One more thing;

Here is a hat started for a January Birthday. That's right, another gift. It's a sickness. Don't look at me like that. I'll be over here knitting.

Rule 5 a.k.a. the Wrapup

2010-12-24T11:27:00.002-06:00

So, today is the final day of our 5-part series. Before we get started let me ask you a question.

What does this look like to you?

Wait, let me give you a hint. It's supposed to go like this:

Yup, it's supposed to be a hat. It should look more like this:

(It says Redbirds on the side for a family friend who plays for the Redbirds.)

Anyone notice the problem?

That brings me to our final rule.

Kalkette's Rules for Christmas Knitting a 5-part series.

Find Rule 1 here.

Find Rule 2 here.

Find Rule 3 here.

Find Rule 4 here.

Rule 5: Don't get cocky. Just because you feel like you are on schedule, have been working steadily, probably all year, on your gifts and just because you are doing well, don't get overconfident.

I'll tell you what happened here. I knit this hat on the weekend of Dec. 16. I was feeling good. I was getting my knitting done at a pretty good pace. There was one problem. It came out sort of...well, big. I started to think about it and the more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. I decided to wash it and give it a little shock. I filled a tub with cold, cold water and one side of the sink with hot, hot water. I swished it gently into the cold and then dashed it into the hot. Back and forth, several time, I even wrung on it a little to give it just a slight felting. Then I took out my coffee can with the hand towel wrapped around it. (Standard hat blocking object) I pulled the hat over it and walked away. Thinking to myself, "There, one more thing I can cross off the list. I'll just let it dry and it will be ready for wrapping. Still doing well, but I'd better go knit now."

Yeah, I came back and it was hanging off the bottom of the coffee can. Over the edge! That's waaaaaaaay too big for a hat. I kept myself from hyperventilating only by the skin of my teeth. I thought I could still fix it.

I decided a "light" felting in the washer was in order. I had accidentally done it before. just a little bit of felting and it would come out just fine. I certainly couldn't leave it the way it was! I filled the washer and dunked it in. I walked away. I came back to a neat felted bowl. It would have (maybe) been okay but the edges, instead of staying straight, flared out like a bowl. Yup, ruined. I had to completely reknit the thing. 5 days before Christmas.

The moral of the story? Don't get cocky, even a little thought that you are totally going to be fine, it's no problem, I can do it. Yeah, it can come back and bite you hard on the hindquarters. Words to live by.

Thanks to you all for tuning in for these rules. It sure was fun for me to post. Merry Christmas from the Kalkette Family to yours. If you don't celebrate Christmas, then may you have a happy holiday of your choosing! See you next week with a tally of how the gifts went over and if I finally finished (on time.)

Rule 4

2010-12-23T07:32:00.002-06:00

I'm posting super early today (for me, shut up) because instead of going to critter-sit today, I'm heading down to my parents to do some cookie decorating with my niece, nephew and some children of a family friend. It's gonna be a good but long day. The critter mom graciously offered to take the critters to work with her so I could go. I'm a little worried for her sanity. I've already checked in and she isn't ready to smack me for abandoning her today so I'm leaving soon with a clear conscience. Sort of.

Well, let's get right to the point.

Kalkette's Rules for Christmas Knitting a 5-part series.

Find Rule 1 here.

Find Rule 2 here.

Find Rule 3 here.

Rule 4: Don't lose focus. This rule might seem pretty obvious. But, when you start to feel like an idiot knitting Christmas gifts in March or April and think, I'll just cast this on for myself, I don't need to work on it. I can stop any time I want, I'm doing Christmas knitting to avoid the crazy twitchy look I had last year, I don't need to have a new shawl for the spring. Then you blink and the well-planned out Christmas knitting is thrown by the wayside and you are in November and there's still a multitude of projects left to be knit and you are sobbing into a cup of coffee at midnight. Wait, that might have been a flashback, hold on.

Ahem. Yes, focus. Stay focused. If you come up with a plan that involves finishing at least one project for a gift every single month of the year, then do it. Don't let yourself get crazy at the end. Be crazy all the way through. Wait, that doesn't sound right.

Don't be crazy at all. Plan and work towards a goal. Like, you know, "normal" people. You don't find them crying into egg nog on Christmas eve, desperately trying to figure out how in the 3 hours they have left before gift-opening, they can finish 12 hours worth of knitting.

In other news, I see the light at the end of the tunnel on my Christmas knitting. All the gifts for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are done. Nothing is wrapped of course and I'm not finished with everything but since there's less of a deadline for the others, I'm feeling like it's possible.
Nothing is wrapped of course, at all and I got pretty much no holiday baking done this year but you know, sacrifices.

See you all tomorrow for part 5.

Rule 3

2010-12-22T12:45:00.003-06:00

Today is another day of the "same old, same old." Filled in with the fact that I didn't get as much knitting done as intended yesterday because of all the baking. Oops. Oh well, at least we had a great breakfast and snack right? Today I'm knitting away frantically while trying not to let Frontierville (a silly little Facebook game) suck up all my time.

Well, since it's becoming much-anticipated. I present to you day 3 of;

Kalkette's Rules for Christmas Knitting a 5-part series.

Find Rule 1 here.

Find Rule 2 here.

Rule 3: Know your Audience. That means plan the gift based on the recipient. For example; A couple of years ago, I knit a nifty pair of arm warmers for a family member. Remember what happened? I sure do.

It still hurts to look at it. I had to reknit one of them. And, since then, they have both been destroyed again. By the giftee's cat. They get no more wool. Yes, they get gifts and even knitted gifts but those people that live in that house do not get wool anymore. I'm not bandying about with good wool yarn just to have it chewed to ribbons.

What else? Oh yeah, if you have a 4 year old niece who refuses to wear socks at all, socks may not be the best plan for her. Even soft, squishy ones. She still won't wear them. Oh sure, she might get all squeaky and excited when she opens them, she may even put them on but as when she says they are "scratchy" (please note, they were not at all scratchy. I used the super soft squishy stuff for this little sweetie) and rips them off of her feet, do not expect to EVER see them again.

All I'm saying is, Think about who it is you are knitting for. Plan accordingly.

Hopefully, despite a cookie-decorating party planned for tomorrow, I can bring you Rule 4.

Rule 2 from a Rockstar!

2010-12-21T14:11:00.002-06:00

So, I'm a total rockstar today! I'm "critter sitting" which is what we call babysitting for a friend. She has two small children. Critter #1 is 3. Critter #2 is 18 months. I've been here since ten to 7 this morning. (That means I was up about 5, let's not discuss it.)
We made homemade pancakes for breakfast. These pancake-ified. (Yes, I think that is a word. I said so.)
Now, Critter #2 is sleeping, Critter #1 is watching Shrek and I have 4 loaves of home made banana bread cooling on the stove and 2 more baking in the oven. Plus, all the dishes are done. I fully expect something horrible and awful to go wrong any moment. Days never go this well for me.

Since yesterday's Rule was pretty popular and I still can't show you anything very interesting. At least nothing that isn't a secret, I bring you...Rule 2.

Kalkette's Rules for Christmas Knitting a 5-part series.

Find Rule 1 here.

Rule 2: Start Early. What exactly is early? Well, to me early really is December 26. Start as soon as you possibly can stand it. I know, it seems ridiculous and you feel so totally foolish knitting socks on the 4th of July that will be a Christmas gift but it truly is the only thing that will save your sanity. Begin as soon as possible.
For me that usually means; I get a well-meaning start in about March (I get waylaid by selfish startitis that hits me really hard after all that gift-giving. If you have friends and family who give you yarn or gift certificates, I would imagine the startitis will hit you even harder. Good luck) anyway, March and then set everything aside for months and months only to realize in late October or *gasp* November, that I'm totally screwed. Do not do this to yourself. Start early, start often.

Tomorrow, Rule 3. (I bet you can hardly wait.)

Rule 1

2010-12-20T10:09:00.002-06:00

There's been lots of knitting around the old homestead lately but it has pretty much been all test-knit and Christmas knitting. I just haven't had time for anything else. Most of that is pretty boring (read: similar to what it looked like yesterday) or secret to keep prying eyes from seeing what will be in their box on Christmas.

Since I don't have anything whatsoever interesting to show you then, I lovingly present to you:

Kalkette's Rules for Christmas Knitting a 5-part series.

Today we will cover Rule #1.

Rule 1: Plan Ahead. This can mean lots of things to lots of people but to me the biggest thing is that I can't just run out and buy a ton of yarn for gifts in one month (not to even mention the crazy-pants idea of knitting it all) so I space it out. I start thinking gifts early, like January if I'm smart, and I start buying or stash-diving to find the right yarn immediately.

Then, realistically, I can space out the cost as well as space out the projects. Hopefully meaning I'm not weeping openly on Christmas Eve. Tomorrow, rule 2.

Finis.

2010-11-16T22:36:00.002-06:00

Last night I did it. I finished my NaKniSweMo sweater.

I love it. I may wear it every single day.

Here I am in it. Pictured with our very own Knitting Graffiti!

Very exciting right?

Well, I'm off to work on my Lothlorien test-knit now. Later.

Bad Blogger, Good Knitter

2010-11-13T10:29:00.002-06:00

I've been a bad little blogger. I haven't been doing much at all to keep you updated but I have been knitting my little fingers to the bone.

Here is the Featherweight Cardigan. Sleeves finished and all the current ends woven in.
I'm ready to pick up for the collar and knit it. It's a very wide collar that goes all the way down to the bottom of the sweater so it will take awhile but I'm very excited because this is the last step and then I will be DONE! Very exciting.

Well, I'm off to knit.

NaKniSweMo

2010-11-03T13:34:00.003-05:00

Part of the reason I was so eager to finish my Nightingale socks. By the way, that's what I finished on Friday evening. Here I am, triumphant.

Please ignore the crazy face. I was pretty tired in this picture, it was midnight and I as so happy to have finished them!

Anyway, part of why I was so eager to finish these before the start of November was so I could participate in National Knit a Sweater Month or NaKniSweMo. I had a plan and cast it on Monday morning.

This would be the Laceweight wool held with the laceweight alpaca like I swatched last week. I'm knitting the Featherweight Cardigan. I'm about halfway through the increases above the armholes. It's turning out really well and I am loving working with this yarn. At least that helps break up the long boring stretches of stockinette right?

They are finished.

2010-11-01T22:48:00.002-05:00

Friday night in Duluth.

That is all.

Here we go Swatch again

2010-10-23T12:33:00.002-05:00

Despite my crazy schedule I have been a busy little knitter lately. Before I went to the retreat I wanted to make a cute little felted purse. It took me less than 2 days to knit this:

with some pretty stash yarn in a sort of heathery purpley red.

Then I felted it down to this:

It's pictured with the same water bottle so you can see how much the size changed. I just love felting. It's like magic!

I also have been working off and on on the yarn that matches my gorgeous clapotis from earlier this year. I want a matching set. So, here are the texting mittens I'm working on. (This pattern looks like a weird little design but if you can, read about them, they are awesome! I can't wait for them to be finished.)

But, Mittens won't keep your head warm right? So, I'm also knitting a cute beret to match as well.

Please ignore the fact that it looks like nothing yet. I can guarantee that this yarn is more beautiful in person than it is in these pictures. I had to use flash because it's so grey and drizzly today but it washes out the color so much.

But that's not all! I'm actually working hard on my Nightingale socks and hoping to finish them soon so I can participate in NaKniSweMo with some ladies from my knitting group and I was nicely enabled by a knitting friend the other day at the yarn store to get this:

A huge skein of Legacy Lace from Brown Sheep (on the right) in Sassy Sage. It says it's 75% Washable wool and 25% Nylon and 1500 yards! Plus, two skeins of Misti Alpaca 100% baby alpaca Handpainted Lace, 874 yards each. I'm going to hold the two strands together to knit the Featherweight Cardigan. I'm swatching already, I'm actually pretty proud of myself for planning ahead.

By the way, if you are thinking about doing this, please think of your poor winding arm. 1500 yards! Killer.

Return to the Real World

2010-10-21T08:08:00.002-05:00

I attended a ladies retreat this last weekend and spent a lot of time knitting. It means I managed to finish knitting the scarf for my mom for Christmas and I managed to work on my travelling socks a little bit as well. I don't have any pictures to show you but I have been so brain-fried after the long weekend that I have spent a lot of time knitting.

I'm past the heel turn on the second Nightingale sock. It's coming along but taking its time, just like the other one.
I dragged out my Labyrinth Carpet Bag and I'm working on that again as well. I don't seem to have ever posted pictures of it. I'll link to my Ravelry Project page. That has a picture. Otherwise I've been just sitting and staring into space at the TV. I'm telling you, I'm totally brain-fried. I've got to get it together pretty quick though, lots to do in the next couple of weeks.

Actual Finished Objects

2010-10-11T12:36:00.003-05:00

You may recall that before I went to Wisconsin I had a goal of finally finished my poor languishing February Lady Sweater. I dug it out, refreshed myself with the pattern and got to work. I had finished one sleeve and had the second to do plus finishing the body. My goal was to make it as long as possible with the amount of yarn I had.

I did manage to finish it, in the van on the way to Wisconsin. Nobody said I had to have it done before I left right?
I made the sleeves about elbow length, maybe a tiny bit more:

and made a tab so they would have a little interest.

Here it is still unblocked and without buttons. I'm not quite sure if I will add buttons or not. I'm not sure I can actually see myself buttoning it up. I also changed my mind and didn't make it as long as possible. I was pretty sick of the pattern. (Simple enough to memorize, easy enough to drive you crazy.) and I thought the length looked really good so I started the edging.

This picture has the most accurate color.

I really don't like it but hubby took it and I promised I would post it. Please be kind.

I also realized that I never took pictures and posted them of my completed Bombadil Tam that I was lucky enough to test-knit.

Here is the beautiful colorwork.

A closeup of the twisted stitches.

The final product in all its glory. I absolutely love it. If you have the chance, Knit this hat!

I found the 3-color colorwork challenging but not overly so an the twisted stitches were also a challenge but well worth the work they took!

With these beautiful projects off the needles you may be asking what's on them.

At least pretend that's what you're asking.
This is the September Merino of the Month club Braid of fiber from Gritty Knits.

I spun it and 3-plied it into a beautiful sock yarn. I loved it so much that I couldn't resist. I wound it up and started knitting. I decided a good old plain sock would be the best to show off the gorgeous colors in this yarn.

It may be going pretty well.

As a matter of fact, it's going so well that WoolPrincess (Ravelry name) is trying to convince me that she needs these for Christmas.
What do you think, is she handspun worthy?

We'll talk about what else is on my needles another day.

Reporting on Wisconsin

2010-09-23T07:19:00.005-05:00

Here I am, your action news reporter with a (mostly) full report of my trip to Wisconsin Sheep and Wool.

My Partner in Wool WoolPrincess and I left on Thursday in the late morning. We planned to leave earlier, it just didn't happen. We tented it so our major goal was to arrive at the site before it got dark. It really isn't pleasant to set up a tent in the dark. Ask me how I know.

I somehow did not manage to get a picture of the tent at all. We even had an amazing rain-shield setup on Saturday for the rain and I didn't get a picture of that either. Terrible action reporter huh?

But, you may be asking, what did you see, we don't care about where you slept.

We saw 2 huge barns that were full of vendors for the wool market. I was blinded by the wool fumes and took no pictures.

We saw sheep shows.

I believe these are Blue-Faced Leicester sheep but I can't remember now.

We saw adorable baby lambs.

This little black one even posed for my camera.

At our campsite we saw people running their herding dogs.

So, we had to go check out the sheep dog trials. It's hard to get a good picture of the trial in motion but I did get a great one of someone waiting patiently for her turn.

All together now, awwwwwwwwwwwww!

On the way home we even stopped at a cheese house.

Pictured here with the second travelling sock.

And as proof that Wisconsonians have their priorities and that I was actually in Wisconsin.

Notice that they put cheese as the priority and food is sort of an afterthought. I love it.

I had a great time and I'm so glad I went but it was cold and I may be getting too old to sleep on the ground with a cheap under-sleeping bag pad so I need to think these things through if I'm going to go again.

Wisconsin.

2010-09-08T23:00:00.002-05:00

I so don't mean to neglect my poor little blog. I'm knitting like crazy but I killed the batteries in my camera and then my week got crazy so I've sort of drifted off again.

I'm going to Wisconsin Sheep & Wool this weekend. I actually leave tomorrow morning. I'm very excited but it's going to be a long drive and a cold weekend camping so I've been knitting my fingers to the bone trying to finish my February Lady Sweater. I've got a couple of other sweaters to bring along but the more the merrier.

Wish me luck! I hope to get some good pictures and have lots of interesting things to say when I return.

Crazy update with a finished object.

2010-08-30T11:50:00.002-05:00

Don't get your hopes up, the Nightingale socks aren't finished. But the Old Man of Storr Shawlette is!

She has even been washed and blocked. It really turned out wonderfully and I can't wait for some crisp autumn days when I will want to wear it.

The center is a simple Garter stitch and then a very simple lace pattern on the edge. I chose to knit mine with two colors of yarn. The Broken Midnight yarn I dyed and the solid grey vintage sock yarn for the edging. It turned out so great. I absolutely love it!

The nightingale socks are coming along though. I am actually past the heel already.

I'm not sure about the yarn, I don't like the brown in the purple and it's too stripey but I'm living with it. A knitting friend told me not to frog so I'm going to at least finish the first sock. Then eventually I may need to knit this pattern with some other yarn.

Here's a close-up of the first bird on the foot. I know it looks a bit funny now but it should block out beautifully. I usually find that to be true with colorwork.

Well, back to knitting. We'll talk about my spinning adventures another day.

Some Progress

2010-08-19T08:25:00.003-05:00

I've been knitting my little fingers to the bone and I actually seem to be making some progress. I started the Nightingale socks as planned on Sunday. Unfortunately, I had issues with it. I needed to increase the number of stitches in order to make my gauge (which I was happy with) fit around my foot/leg. I, without thinking, cast on the recommended number of stitches but in increasing to the number I needed, I ended up with a much longer toe than I liked. Then I made a mistake knitting the chart and when I corrected it, was unhappy with how I had loose little floats behind there. I decided to frog. It was painful, but it needed to be done.

I cast on again, this time with 25 stitches each for front and back rather than the recommended 19 and knit along. It's going well. There was a brief moment on Tuesday where I nearly ripped and restarted with different yarn because I'm not loving how much brown there is in the purple yarn but I persisted and I'm at the gusset increases for the heel now. Somehow this makes me feel like I'm almost halfway done with the first sock, even though the leg is much longer than the foot and I'm not even there yet. Let me have my sad little delusion okay.

I don't have a picture today because the weather is gray and drizzly so I can't seem to get nice light but I'll keep plugging away and maybe tomorrow we'll have a ray of sunshine perfect for taking pictures. A girl can dream can't she?

I'm also very excited to report that the Old Man of Storr shawl is officially off the needles. As a matter of fact, it's blocking right now. I'm very excited. It actually blocked out larger than I expected and it's about an inch narrower than my height. It's not super long but it looks great. I can't wait to unpin it and wear it everywhere.

Swatching for the Crazies

2010-08-11T16:24:00.002-05:00

A few people in my local knitting group recently started talking about the Nightingale pattern. (I highly encourage you to look at that Ravelry pattern link before you read further.)

They even went so far as to plan a knit-along for it. I love the socks, I think they look amazing. I also think it's a sort of insane kind of crazy to undertake that project. Then I went looking for something in my sock yarn stash and found some yarn. Yarn that would be perfect for it.

Yes, that's right, I have joined the club crazy. Our knit-along is set to start on Sunday and we will have a gathering on Monday as our "official" kick-off since too many people have plans on Sunday. In order to be ready, I purchased the pattern, cleared off needles and today, I took these two yarns,

and I knit a swatch.

These are stranded colorwork socks with charts and so I think gauge is going to be really important. Otherwise I would take my normal just go for it and see what happens approach to my knitting.

I even knit the swatch in the round to make sure it was as accurate as possible. But, I need your help. I need to decide which color is the foreground and which is the background. In order to get a good picture of that, I knit a small portion of a chart on my swatch. One side with the white as the background (that's just part of a bird tail and some leaves, I couldn't bring myself to knit the whole bird)

One side with the Purple as the background.

I am planning to use magic loop for these to keep the sides together and hopefully make the colorwork easier. The pattern calls for size 2.50mm needles (sometimes called US Size 1.5) and I used my 2.5mm Addi Turbo needles to knit the swatch.

I think I already know what I like but I want more opinions. I won't be getting together with the knitting group until Monday and I want to start right away on Sunday (if possible) so I need to make a decision.

Note: this swatch is still wet from washing so the colors are a little more accurate in the ball but you can get a pretty good picture. I also won't know for sure about gauge until it's dry and I can measure it.

Here's where you come in. Leave me a comment. Tell me which you think is better, white background or purple background. I'm not going to tell you what I think until I get your opinion.

Tour de Fleece results and catchup

2010-08-09T18:11:00.005-05:00

I'm so sorry to have gone so long without posting. I keep saying that I will post more often and then I never seem to do it. Well, this time, I'm going to stick to it. My new goal is at least once a week. Preferably twice. Even if I don't have anything new to show you, I need to get to posting more often.

Since I seem to have Mondays and Wednesdays mostly free, my goal is to post on those two days. So, here I am on Monday trying to get you caught up on what's been going on for the last month.

Let's see. When last we left our intrepid knitter, she was working on the Tour de Fleece right? You might be asking, how did it go? Well, I think it was a smashing success. In the Tour de Fleece you set your own goals. My goal was to spin at least 2 four ounce braids of roving and navajo-ply it into sock yarn. I trained and on the first day of the tour, I got started. I really wanted to get a head start so that if life got busy later, I could slack a little and still be able to finish. I started with my Merino of the month club braid from Gritty Knits. I am not going to post pictures of it prespun because I have done that already and this post will be picture-heavy enough.

Here it is all finished. It turned out so beautiful and I ended up with about 600 yards which is really bordering on laceweight but I really want these gorgeous stripes in some socks.

Next, I chose to spin a braid of fiber a friend gave me. She runs the etsy shop Hand over the Wool and wanted me to try out some fiber she had dyed for the shop. I know she has more of this fiber but I don't see it posted yet so be looking for it.

Here it is unspun and finished.

and closeup. It really isn't colors I would normally choose but it turned out just beautiful and I ended up with about 49o yards of beautiful sock yarn. I'm very excited to find something to knit with this gorgeous stuff.

I actually finished this fiber with plenty of time to spare. I debated whether I thought I should start something else with only about 4 days left but I just couldn't sit there not spinning while the tour was still going on.

I chose a braid of BFL I purchased in a stash sale on Ravelry. She dyed it herself and it was such an interesting combination, I couldn't resist.

Here it is all spun up.

and a closeup with a quarter so you can see how it came out. I actually got less yardage with this one because I was working on my long draw technique since it had such an amazing long staple length. I managed to finish it on the last day of the tour at 2 a.m. It was very exciting to be able to finish so much more than I imagined. I was up with my local spinners because we had a fiber retreat for the end of the tour.
I ended up trading the violet and lime BFL to my friend with the etsy shop for a few things. Plus, my babysitting services meant, I came home with some beautiful things.

Here's my total haul from the fiber retreat. In the upper right is some Funky Carolina Merino Combed top that I won in our gift exchange along with a chocolate bar, some coffee and a gorgeous knitting bag that's acting as a purse right now. Below that is fiber from the friend's etsy shop. Superfine Merino and baby alpaca. So soft it feels like butter. Below that is the Superwash Merino and Bamboo fiber that I couldn't resist because the gorgeous pinks and browns were calling my name. On the left in the upper part is some that is from the friend's etsy shop as well. Some Merino and Silk in gorgeous blues and greens. I had to have it because it matches the other so well. A braid I bought from another person's destash of Gritty Knits merino of the month.

I did put a little something into the gift exchange myself. Some Superwash Merino and Nylon that I dyed with my broken black.

It turned out really well and I hope I get to see it spun up because it is so beautiful.

Other than all the spinning, which has been slowed down a lot since the tour, I have been doing a little knitting.
I've been working on my shawlette in the broken black and I actually got to add the grey border now. I strung it onto some dental floss at my parents to see how it was coming.

I'm so excited. I think it looks great.

I also managed to knit a secret pair of socks for a friend's birthday.

They're knit with Plymouth Yarn Happy Feet, one of my all time favorite sock yarns because it's so soft and holds up so nicely.

I used the pattern Lace and Cable socks from Wendy Knits book Socks from the Toe up.

Here's a closeup of the lace pattern.

I also managed to knit a little knitting bag to match my new knitting bag/purse from some handspun.

The yarn is from forest fiber works. Please go there and buy everything up. I went and looked and want it all now.

The colorway is Eco and I purchased it last November and spun it into a two-ply. I still have another skein so I'm hoping to knit it into something else to match my knitting bag/purse.

I used the pattern Humbug bag from 101 Designer One Skein Wonders. Although, I did use the Linen stitch for the body rather than the pattern it called for and I knit a band for the strap rather than ribbon like suggested. I didn't leave a hole for the yarn either and mine came out a bit smaller but I love it!

Romantic isn't always the best choice.

2010-07-07T20:42:00.002-05:00

I have a bit of a confession. I love old movies and I love doing little things to help try to save the environment. In the last couple of years, I switched over to handkerchiefs rather than tissues. It may not be a BIG thing, but little things add up. Don't worry, I wash them in hot water with lots of soap, they're totally disinfected and I actually love using them. I also have this romantic old movie idea about them, that they should be pretty and frilly and wonderful. Of course they aren't. You can't find (at least not easily) hankies that are utilitarian and pretty. My solution of course is to Crochet or knit my own edges onto them. I have thought and thought about this, but never seemed ready to do anything about it until last night at Crochet Night.

First, pick a pattern for an edging that you like.
Then, crochet a sample.

Hmm, very pretty but it is worked back and forth and doesn't have corner directions.

Take a lot of notes and come up with a plan for a corner.

Then, if you think it will work, crochet a corner.

So far so good. That's an almost perfect right angle. Now measure the hanky, plan the number of stitches and start right?

It looks beautiful but it's taking forever. Remind me why I wanted to do this again.

And We're Off

2010-07-05T18:17:00.004-05:00

Saturday was the official Kick-off of the Tour de France and therefore also the kick-off of the Tour de Fleece. It's very exciting. My goals are to spin 2 braids of fiber (4 oz. each) to be navajo-plied into sock yarn.

I haven't actually chosen the second but here is a sneak peek of the first and how it's going.

This is my Gritty Knits Merino Braid of the Month from May of this year. Isn't it great? I love getting fiber every month and this club is great because you pay monthly so it doesn't come all at once.

I have been planning to N-ply it to keep the beautiful colors together and it's going to be sock yarn so I wanted some great stripes so I stripped it the full length of the braid.

And, on Saturday, I started spinning. So far, I've spun almost 2 oz. of the first braid.

Here are some gorgeous singles

I'm glad that I'm "ahead" right now because if I lose momentum as time goes on, I can hopefully still finish. So far, things are looking GREAT.

In other news, I feel like I won the lottery because I have been chosen as the chart test-knitter for one of Susan Pandorf's amazing patterns. I'm knitting the Bombadil hat (it's in her series based on the Lord of the Rings and it's based on a character that was left out of the movies named Tom Bombadil.)

It's several rows of colorwork followed by one color twisted stitches. It's beautiful so far, even though I'm knitting it out of other colors besides those that are recommended and the pattern is beautifully written (charted).

In Training

2010-07-03T11:05:00.003-05:00

As promised, here is the project I'm knitting with the sock yarn I dyed. I still can't believe the amazing colors I got using only black food coloring. This doesn't look like anything at all right now, but I can assure you, it's going to be a beautiful little shawlette when it's finished. First, I'm adding an edging though. You'll have to wait for that.

In other news, I've been in training recently for the Tour de Fleece which starts today. To "train" as it were, I've been spinning some beautiful 50/50 Wool/Soysilk. I, of course, forgot to take pictures of it pre-spinning because I was so excited when I received it, that I started spinning within 48 hours. But, here's the singles on the bobbin.

I wasn't exactly sure what I was hoping for with this fiber but I am wanting to spin a single and navajo-ply it for socks in the Tour de Fleece so I was trying to spin this nice and fine.

I succeeded in spinning it pretty fine and decided to navajo-ply it.

Here it is, as it's being plied. I was unsure about how it was turning out. Sure, there were some nice fine places and most of it was turning out about sock-weight I thought, but I wasn't sure.

Then I wound it off the bobbin. Onto the Niddy Noddy.

Wow, it looks even better here doesn't it? Well, as a part of winding it off, I count the approximate yardage.

Wondering what I ended up with? I was too.

Here I present, a beautiful skein of Tempted Yarns Persuasion. 50/50 Wool/Soysilk. 440 yards!

That's right, I did it! 440 yards in 4 oz. that's sock-weight baby! Excuse me while I happy dance now.

More on the Tour de Fleece Later.

Last Day of the Month

2010-06-30T14:04:00.002-05:00

I keep promising pictures of what I'm knitting and I keep falling short. The good news is: I have finished the sock samples for our local crafts store and have turned them in. That means that I can actually knit what I want, when I want now. I'm so excited I hardly know what to do with myself.

Of course, today I realized it was the last day of the month and that at the end of next month I have a baby shower for my sister-in-law. I'd better get working on her baby gift. So, until I get sick of it, that's what will be on my radar for now. All it looks like so far is a big pink mass of yarn but as soon as I make any headway whatsoever, I'll post some pictures so you can see what it looks like.

Patience my Lovelies

2010-06-24T13:17:00.003-05:00

I was planning to post again this week with pictures of what I'm knitting with the beautiful yarn I dyed with the black food coloring.

Unfortunately, planning for the step-sister's baby shower and critter-sitting have taken precedence. So, all my lovely readers, you will have to wait until I return from yet another busy weekend. I hope you can contain your excitement.

Let me just leave you with this:

Last week, a tornado ripped through the town of Wadena, MN. It was believed to be an F4. The landscape of the town is completely changed. I have family there and luckily they are all ok and do not have damage to their homes. The problem is that all their school buses and the high school were destroyed and the school is too old to be repaired. Hence, they are trying to find a way to get help. I don't know if it will work or not, but there's a possibility that if you are on Facebook and you post a comment here:
Facebook link
Then they may be able to get help for their school. Its not a sure thing but any little thing helps. If you are on Facebook and/or are so inclined, please go and comment.

Thank you.

Tuesdays really are for Crocheting

2010-06-22T13:55:00.002-05:00

Here I am following up with my goal to post more often.

Today's Tuesday and those of you who have been following for awhile know that Tuesdays are for Crocheting because I moderate an Open Crochet Night at our local crafts store.

So, here it is, a crochet project. This is a baby blanket for my Step-sister who is due very, very soon.

I am gifting it to her on Friday at her baby shower and I'm pretty sure there's no way she will see it here on my blog so I'm not worried.

The yarn is some Bernat Softee chunky that I had in the stash and its just a simple design that I made up. There's a Double crocheted center in white, then I went round and round the edge with double crochet in the blue variegated. I did one round of white to add interest.

I seriously wondered about using this acrylic yarn for a baby gift, however, the blanket isn't very big, it's more like something to throw over a car seat as the weather gets cool or to be drug around the house as he learns to walk so it wouldn't be something used for sleeping. I am also proud that I stash-busted to make this lovely little blanket. It took me less than 2 full crochet nights, so less than 6 hours to make this lovely gift and less than 4 balls of yarn.
I think the bulkiness of the yarn and the fact that it's acrylic and therefore less likely to be ruined by the stepsister who I am not sure has a healthy understanding of caring for handmade items will make this a wonderful gift for the new little nephew that should be here in a few short weeks.

There's just something about Fridays

2010-06-18T16:07:00.004-05:00

I keep trying to post more often, I make this plan and then get busy and don't seem to have the time but then Friday comes around and I feel bad and here I am posting the only time this week, again.
It's definitely for a good cause though. I mentioned last week that I hadn't been knitting nearly as much as I've been spinning. That is so true.
Here we have the results of my recent spinning.

On the left you will find the pound of roving that was dyed at Shepherd's Harvest by me, in the dyeing class.

They sure turned out nice didn't they? Let's have a close-up shall we?

All 5 skeins were navajo-plied to keep the colors together and I think they turned out really nicely, although they are different weights, too much time between spinning means inconsistency.

On the right, you will find a little skein, this wee little thing may not look like much but it's a lovely Merino/Alpaca blend that a friend gave me a little sample of and I spindle spun it. I actually came out with over a hundred yards of a lovely two-ply. Again, let's take a closer look.

Its somewhere between a light fingering weight and a heavy lace-weight. I love it. I can't wait to find something beautiful to knit with it. As a matter of fact, I'm thinking about this, although the yardage may be somewhat light for that. We'll see.

I'm off to see my parents again for a few days so my spindle's packed in my bag because, well, I am training for the Tour de Fleece and I am trying to spin every day.

Although, I did dye up some very nice yarn.

It's a lovely skein dyed with black food coloring that broke in all the right ways and it is currently on some needles and I am dying to knit more with it.

Secrets though, I'll have to wait to tell you what I'm knitting and keep you in suspense.

Wrapped up in Love

2010-06-11T13:57:00.002-05:00

I've been so crazy busy lately, I've barely even thought about posting anything but that doesn't mean that knitting (and spinning for that matter) have not occurred.
Actually, I've been doing quite a bit of Knitting and Crocheting.

Case in point: The Red yarn thing.

Some people correctly guessed what it was. It is a Clapotis.

I used the yarn dyed by my friend for her Etsy shop. It is dangerous to be friends with her because she has this yarn and fiber lying around her house and I see it and I want to take it all home. Sometimes I can resist, sometimes not.

I knit this gorgeous thing with less than two skeins of sock weight yarn and it is PLENTY long. I can wrap it around my neck twice and the ends are very long. It was knit on size 5 needles so its not quite as wide as the pattern calls for but I think it works just fine for a wrap too. I love it. I rarely take it off now that its done and I'm taking a short break from this gorgeous red yarn to knit something else.

Um, I tried dyeing some yarn using black food coloring (with the hope that I could get something to maybe sell) and loved it so much, I may have kept it and cast it on. We'll have to talk about that another day.

Two Rows

2010-06-02T15:39:00.003-05:00

Things have been absolutely crazy around here lately, to the tune of the fact that I haven't really even thought about posting. I want to, I need the outlet if nothing else but I've been too busy to do it.

So, instead, I'll bring to you all up-to-date on my most recent adventure. Its not knitting related except that I was on the way to knit night.

Our group meets every month on the same date, regardless of what day of the week it is so that it alternates every month. Then, those who can't make it on a certain day of the week for whatever reason, have the opportunity to make it to other days. It seems to work well. Anyway, our date is the 19th so a couple of weeks ago, I was on my way to Knit night. I have to travel about 30 miles to Knit night and I travel down a major highway to get there. I was on my way when I noticed, near a bridge over some water that an animal had been hit on the side of the road. I realized it must be a duck when I noticed a little group of ducklings waddling around alone on the side of the road, obviously upset and trying to figure out what to do.

What could I do? I turned around, went back and picked up the 5 little birds. What did I have in my car to put them in? This sounds awful.

Only a large stock pot that I had purchased to use as a dye pot. So, there they were, little birds in a big pot. Several of them tried to jump out but luckily the sides were JUST high enough that they couldn't. You can sort of see one of them in there.

So now I had stopped and picked up these birds but what on earth was I supposed to do with them? I obviously had no way to rehabilitate them and they were not meant to be pets. I drove into town to meet up with my other knitters and we talked about it. We looked up numbers and I called all over. We tried to give them water, they tried to swim in it and ended up spilling it all over.

I tried to call the DNR but they were closed as it was after 5:00. (I find this somewhat ridiculous. There are animals to be helped more than just 8-5!)
Finally, finally, I got the number of a lady in our area who takes in animals and rehabilitates them. I drove them out to her house and dropped them off.

She obviously knew all about what to do and even knew that these were Mergansers not ordinary Mallard Ducks.

My car ride home seemed oddly quiet but somehow I felt like I had earned my keep on this earth for a day. For about an hour and a half there, I had 5 birds. They sure were sweet too but I'm so glad they have a chance to be the wild birds they were born to be.

That is the reason I was only able to knit 2 rows on my scarf at Knit Night. Well worth it I'd say.

The Harvest

2010-05-13T10:49:00.003-05:00

Here in Minnesota there's a big fiber festival that you frequently hear about called Shepherd's Harvest. As I've only been spinning for a little over a year (wow, it seems like so much longer) and only really into the internet knitting community for a couple of years, I finally got to go this year for the first time. My fibery friend from here in town and I decided to take a dyeing class. Dyeing roving. It was great. As a part of the fees to take the class, you get to not only learn our wonderful teacher's techniques but you also get to take home a full pound of roving. Separated into two braids. As such, you can choose which dye bath to place those two roving into. I chose two different ones and ended up with:

and

Awesome aren't they? I may have started spinning the bottom one already. (Can you believe that pink is supposed to be maroon?! I laugh in its general direction.)
Also, as the weather here has been pretty rainy and drizzly for awhile and by awhile I mean "Please kill me". I apologize for the awful pictures I have of everything I brought home.

Of course there are also vendor booths and various other amazing things to look at and do. We saw the sheep dog show. Then we watched them shear sheep for awhile, we got to see live sheep of various breeds which was very interesting. Let me just say, they look very little like the wool you will get from them.

I was recommended to go with a "shopping list" as there is so much to look at, if you don't have SOME idea of what you would like to purchase, it can be overwhelming. I didn't have an official list, but I did have some ideas of what I would like to come away with.
1) One or more fibers I hadn't tried to sample.
2) A Turkish drop spindle for travel and general spinning for fun/in small quantities.
3) I wanted to look for the Cloudlover booth because everyone at my spinning guild had been talking about their amazing rovings.

I think I did pretty well. Here are my purchases.

At the top, you can sort of see the amazing Cloudlover roving I picked up. Its deep rich purples on Merino/Silk. AMAZING!
On the left is a large zippy bag of Merino Roving. 10 oz. Plain colored so I could dye it or just spin it plain. I already played with the next item my turkish drop spindle with some of this roving. I wanted to try out the spindle to see how it worked on the way home. Luckily, I wasn't the driver.
Next to the drop spindle is a small bag of tussah silk fiber to spin. 2 oz. Its very pretty but also dyeable if I would like. Then next to that is a bag of Ingeo or corn fiber. At the very bottom is a beautiful little wooden needle case.

Overall I had a great time. Its so weird to go and see that every booth is fiber and knitting and spinning supplies and beautiful. Usually if you go to an event there's a few things you want and so many booths you just pass by. Here, I almost wanted to walk into every booth and buy something from everyone.

I will definitely be attending again next year. Now that I know more what to expect, I also think that it will be much less overwhelming. It was difficult to make some decisions about what to purchase and what to pass over.

Love at First Sight

2010-05-03T15:18:00.002-05:00

Did you ever see some yarn and just fall completely, madly, hopelessly in love? You just can't live without it?

I have. It all began over at my friend Lisa's house. She had some yarn sitting out on her deck drying. I couldn't stop looking at it. I went and touched it, I couldn't stop touching it.

Finally, I decided, it had to be mine. Since she was dyeing it to sell in her Etsy shop, there was no problem. I asked about it. I had to have it.

I made a deal and brought it home with me. I wound it up and could barely wait more than a few minutes to cast it on. (Okay, I may have cast on at her house because I couldn't wait.)

Ah, isn't it beautiful?
I'm not going to tell you what I'm knitting though, not yet. I'm going to make you guess. I'll tell you later.

In other news, its been raining off and on for days here. I feel a bit like a mildewed, frog or something. But, on Saturday while travelling home with my mom from a family event, we saw a double rainbow. Gotta say it almost made the whole rain thing worthwhile.

I know the picture isn't that great but you can kinda see it. It's that cool?

Okay, I go knit my mystery project now.

Mastering the Art of The Mirror Self-Portrait, or not

2010-04-27T13:00:00.004-05:00

Last week ended up being a crazy week, a trip down to see my parents for something ended up lasting several extra days. It didn't mean that there wasn't any knitting, just that there was less knitting. I had fun anyway and managed to trick myself into catching the cold I thought I had managed to avoid. Darn germs.
Anyway, when I finally returned home, I had to get some things done and return the house to its former state, which is to say: Non-Feral Bachelor mode. I'm finally (mostly) caught up with things and so, I'm getting back to posting and finishing up a few things. First, I did manage to finish my Malabrigo socks. They have technically been "on the needles" for a long time, although one has been finished for quite awhile and I just put it away for awhile. I finally cast on the second and finished them up last week.

The Specs:
The Yarn: Malabrigo sock. I believe the color is called Persia although I lost the label quite awhile ago.
The Needles: US Size 1 DPNs
The Pattern: Just a basic sock, plain stockinette with a heel flap.
The Recipient: Are you kidding? Malabrigo? These are for ME!
The Notes: I love the colors of this yarn. Some people I've talked to have mentioned that they don't like this yarn because it seemed splitty. I had no problems with that at all.

Then, I pulled out the Trekking socks I had been working on just before the Malabrigo socks. I thought I had finished them but somehow managed to miss a couple of ends that needed to be woven in and my rule is: They aren't finished until the ends are woven.
So here they are in their blog debut:

The Specs:
The Yarn: Trekking XXL. I have no idea the color. The label has gone the way of the dodo.
The Needles: US Size 1 DPNs
The Pattern: A Basic sock in a 3x1 Rib.
The Recipient: Me, I need a few pairs of basic, go with almost everything socks.
The Notes: The idea behind buying this Trekking was making basic socks that go with everything. While that was a wonderful plan, knitting these socks nearly put me off sock-knitting. That might partly be because I knit them while the world outside was roughly the same color as the yarn. And, although I haven't had this problem with any other Trekking I have used (and I have knit several pairs of socks from Trekking) I found many knots in this ball. If I had purchased it recently, I would maybe have considered bringing it back and exchanging it but it had rested in my stash for several years.

Since I've done so well with finishing things, I let myself cast on a couple of new things. First, a hideous pair of socks I'm knitting for my husband. I know he loves Blue but I just couldn't stand the thought of knitting a solid blue pair of socks for him so I bought another ball of a colorful yarn I thought would be manly enough and match. It doesn't really match, but I'm ignoring that. So should you.

They are coming along though.

I started another pair of socks but they are hiding in my purse and I don't have the energy to go pull them out and take photos right now so you will just have to wait.

Finally, remember when I broke down and ordered from Gritty Knits? I got a beautiful braid of Merino/Tencel Roving called Cabbage Patch.

It was so pretty that I couldn't wait to start spinning it and as a matter of fact, I barely stopped long enough to take a picture.
I spun it into singles and Navajo-plied it to keep the colors together.

I was so in love with the yarn, I wanted to knit it like crazy and couldn't decide what to do with it.

Finally, a knitting friend suggested Baktus I thought about it for about 20 minutes and then cast on. Well...

It came out beautifully but I still wasn't sure. It wasn't until some ladies at knit night suggested Severe! blocking that I decided to try it.

I wove in the ends and called it done. I love it and have worn it out in public several times already. Of course I attempted to take a self-portrait in the mirror so you could see how it looks on but none of the pictures came out. They were AWFUL as a matter of fact. Oh well, use your imagination.

Tonight is Crochet Night so I will probably get back into my Christmas Projects. Yes, you read that right, I have started my Christmas Knitting/Crocheting already. Don't look at me like that. More on that later.

Freeing up the Needles

2010-04-13T14:04:00.003-05:00

Despite my Startitis of late, I've been trying desperately to keep myself on task and actually finish a few things before starting new ones. Some days its a struggle because I don't want to work on current projects but some days its just fine and I work along on something easily.

Since today is Tuesday (and I have Open Crochet Night this evening) I will focus on the Crochet first. For months I have had a little doily finished that I intended to put on my desk. All it needed was two measly ends woven in and to be blocked. For some reason, I just couldn't seem to bring myself to do it.
Finally, I broke down and finished it. You know something? It feels pretty good.

Pattern: Filet Crochet Doily from Beginner's Guide to Filet Crochet
Yarn: DMC Traditions Crochet Cotton, Size 10, one skein 5818 Pink
Hook: 1.75mm
Recipient: Me, for my desk in my home office.
Notes: I found this pattern very easy to follow. It is cast on at the side and crocheted across to the other side, making long rows but fewer of them.

Inspired by the fact that I finally finished it, I managed to finish another project as well. One that has been in my sights pretty much as soon as I touched it:

I apologize for the bad picture, its very grey outside here today and I couldn't seem to find decent light for these to save my life.
Regardless, here we go:

The Pattern: Feather & Fan Socks from Socks, Socks, Socks with a modified pattern repeat.
The Yarn: Patons Kroy Sock, handdyed by me with Easter Egg dye.
The Needles: US Size 2 (2.75 mm)
The Recipient: Since this yarn is pretty special to me and they fit me perfectly, hmm. Me!
Notes: I would only like to note that with these socks, it was pretty special because I had dyed the yarn myself and had so much fun doing it.

Well, there you have it, two more projects out of the running, now maybe I will have more focus to apply to other projects. Although, I wouldn't hold your breath.

Sunshine and Spinning make everything better

2010-04-09T16:49:00.007-05:00

I keep meaning to post, I've actually been doing quite a bit of knitting but I never seem to get to it. It's really sad actually.
The Busy keeps catching me and I get involved in like 12 other things and don't get back to my poor, sad little blog.

I have to say though, everything is better when my view looks like this:

Ahhh, just seeing the picture makes me feel better.
I've been promising some picture of the yarn I've been having ever so much fun dyeing and finally, I'm going to deliver, since I finally just updated my ravelry project page and I'm too exhausted (mentally) from doing that to organize my thoughts here as well.
First, I dyed some Blueish Monochromatic yarn but I unhappy with the blue, it was very denimy and not rich like I imagined so I added some purple and dyed it again. I ended up with this:

I think its beautiful and subtle and I can't wait to find just the right pattern to knit with it.

Then, I decided to dye some yarn in rainbow colors since a friend from spinning guild has these very cute socks that are 2 rounds of white and 2 rounds of a rich jewel-toned rainbow color all the way down the socks. I sat next to her and couldn't stop thinking about them at all. I ended up with much brighter colors but I still think (once I start them) they will be beautiful.
The top of the skein:

The bottom of the skein:

The unwound skein:

I laid the yarn out just like shown here on plastic wrap and painted the colors onto it. Then I wrapped it tightly in the plastic wrap and put it in a microwave-safe dish folded in half with the yellow portion up on a little bowl to keep the colors from bleeding into the yellow too much. It turned out beautifully. I can't wait to start the socks but I have promised myself that I will finish a few projects first.

Finally, I wanted something nice and bright and springy so I picked out some yellow (which I wanted to be somewhat faded, it isn't at all though) and some tealy green and purple. I painted it onto the skein similarly to the rainbow yarn and came out with this:

I was so excited, I couldn't even stop myself from casting it on and ended up with these:

Its striping beautifully and I'm so excited to have such beautiful, bright socks for spring.

Epic

2010-03-22T22:01:00.003-05:00

Once in awhile a project will come along that calls out to you. You want to knit it and it means something. (For some people, this happens a lot.) For me, (in this particular case) it came last December at a fiber swap. There was a stack of magazines that didn't belong to anyone and anyone could take them if they would be interested. I found an old copy of Interweave Knits from before I was really into the knitting scene and (Winter 2004) and flipped through it to see if I would like any of the patterns. I did!

There was a pattern for knee-high socks that called for a reasonable amount of yarn. I say reasonable only because knee-high socks, which I was somewhat interested in knitting for some time, usually call for about 600 yards of yarn. I don't usually have anything in stash that actually has 600 yards and while I wanted to knit knee-high socks, I didn't want to go out and buy yarn just for them. The pattern was simply called Lace Knee-Highs but had a lovely Embossed leaves lace running down the entire leg. The foot was plain. I took the magazine home and thought about it.

If I knit them, I wanted to continue the pattern down the foot, I thought. Plus, I would have to find some wonderful yarn, I mean, this was an EPIC project, right?

Later, I realized that some beautiful roving I had ordered for my birthday from a lovely little etsy shop (click at your own risk, there's lots of lovely stuff over there!), had spun up to be a wonderful 2-ply and was 490 yards or so. The pattern called for 480 yards. I had been conservative in my estimate, and what could be more decadent and special than knee-high socks knit of handspun?

Nothing

I did decide to do the feet plain as written mainly because a)It was a horrible pain even trying to chart the foot and b)I wanted to show off the lovely yarn.

I ended up knitting the feet very, very quickly because I wasn't sure if I would run out of yarn. I didn't but it was close. Like close, close. Like, less than 6 inches of yarn remaining close. Yeah, I mean it when I say close.

Ah, I'm going to go relax with my lovely socks now.

As long as we're finishing things...

2010-03-05T16:47:00.005-06:00

Let's talk about the guy I'm married to.
First off, he's a major nerd. (I may have nerdish tendencies myself so that's okay) but he is a Nerd with a capital N.

This his him watching the Vikings in the playoffs game:

Isn't he cute? Please ignore our hideous couch ok.

Anyway, as a part of his super nerdy status, he loves comic books and especially superheroes. I had purchased some green sock yarn, expecting to use it for a specific project. I didn't (because it didn't actually match the yarn that I bought with it) and so I had this green yarn lying around that was BRIGHT green. Like grass green. Now, I like green quite a bit but this was too green for me. Hubby needed socks so I asked him if he would maybe wear socks knit with the green yarn. His reply? I'm glad you asked. (Pretend you asked)

"Can they be Green Lantern Socks?"

I decided that I could probably make that work so I started off on my sock knitting. Now, understand that my hubby has size 13 feet! I knit these on....ones. Yeah, I am insane and ended up staring at this green yarn WAAAAAAAAAY longer than I wanted to. As a result, I couldn't even contemplate how I would duplicate stitch the Green Lantern pattern on for quite awhile. Then he started asking me. The things we won't do for the people we love. *sigh*

Finally, I decided to crochet the Green Lantern Symbols and stitch them on because I was afraid I wouldn't get the right shape if I used duplicate stitch. So, here they are in all their green glory.

One pair of Green Lantern socks. For those who are gluttons for punishment, here's a close-up.

The Specs:
The Yarn: Knit Picks Essential Sock Yarn in Grass (Yarn is now called Stroll) and Kroy Socks in Whitecap. Looks like the changed the name of the color to Muslin or maybe they don't have Whitecap anymore?
The Needles: US Size 1 Dpns and Size E Crochet Hook (3.50mm)
The Pattern: I just made a generic green sock and made up the crocheted Green Lantern Symbol. If anyone is interested, I did write down the directions for the symbol, I just don't know if anyone wants to actually make a Green Lantern Symbol.
Notes: AHHHHH! The green.

I may or may not have mentioned that I made a local fiber friend. She's very awesome and has an etsy store. As such, sometimes when I watch her children, I get to get paid in fiber. Yes, that's right, for watching her adorable children, I was given this:

Isn't it pretty? Just what a girl needs in March in Minnesota. (This is what I was giving myself 5 minute spinning breaks to spin too by the way)
I spun it into two bobbins of singles:

I apologize for the extremely crappy picture. The colors on the left are pretty much accurate though.
Then, I was even patient enough to let it sit on the bobbin and rest overnight but yesterday I plied it into this:

Isn't it gorgeous? Its so not the colors I would normally wear but I may have to knit some socks out of it anyway. Its about 366 yards. I washed it today and it's drying right now. Let's see if I can resist casting it on all weekend shall we?

Olympic Gold

2010-03-04T17:53:00.002-06:00

When I joined the Knitting Olympics I didn't have much of a plan. I had some black yarn that I had purchased at our Spinning Guild's most recent Stash Swap/Sale. It was beautiful. Knitpicks Andean Silk in Pitch. I had 1300 yards and I wanted a cardigan. Understand that I am of the school that believes that black goes with EVERYTHING. I have one black cardigan. A crappy thing that is very thin and doesn't fit well from a retail store. I have worn that thing all over the place. I love a black cardigan. I thought, 1300 yards should be plenty to knit a cardigan right? Right. Even for a "lady" of my size.

Then I got the beautiful yarn home and started looking at patterns. Nothing too fancy because it is in black, it would be hard to see, nothing too plain either because it would be boring to work on.

I considered the February Lady Sweater for which I would have ample yardage but I already have one on the needles. (As a matter of fact I wanted to finish it before the Olympics but time got away from me.)

I dug and dug and dug. I wanted something long-sleeved. I wanted pretty. Not too plain. I had a needle size picked out (I even swatched!) there just wasn't anything. (I also kinda didn't want to buy a pattern since money has been a bit pinched lately as we awaited our new vehicle.)

Finally I settled on Hey Teach! The sleeves were all wrong and as it turned out, my gauge was off. That meant (ugh!!!) math.

I forged ahead. Then I went to my parents to help with their fish fry and ended up staying an extra 2 days. I didn't bring it with me. I had to wait to cast on. I didn't cast on until....Tuesday, February 16! My time was even shorter.

I ended up bored of dark-colored yarn and I struggled to stay focused. I battled with myself.
Self, if you knit 5 more rows you can knit one round of your cute knitting bag, self, if you knit 10 more rows, you can spin for five minutes. And I set a timer for the 5 minutes. It was torture. Every other project called out to me, especially once I reached the sleeves. They were modified to be plain stockinette sleeves, long sleeves. A majorly boring pain to knit but you know what?

It was all worth it.

I love my new cardigan. I love it so much that I took about 10 pictures of it in the snow and then forced my (ever so cooperative) hubby to take many, many pictures of me in it.

I have spared you all from the awful ones. Ansel Adams he is not.

Here it is, my beautiful Olympic sweater, pictured here on Saturday February 27. That's right, I finished a day early. Now, I shall proudly put up my Gold Medal in the sidebar for all to see.

The Stats:
The Pattern: Hey Teach from Knitty
The Yarn: Knit Picks Andean Silk in Pitch about 1100 yards or so.
The Needles: Size 7
The Size: Due to my strange gauge issues, since I am a 48" bust, I ended up knitting a 43" bust size
The Notes: GOLD!
I picture this as my go-to sweater for the coming forever.

Love it, envy it. (haha)

These photos were taken at my parents house where I was doing this:

Knitting by the fire. Ah yes, bliss.

It is Finished

2010-02-27T22:43:00.003-06:00

As of 9:00 am, the sweater is finished. I have gold medaled in my first Olympics! Well, okay, my first knitting Olympics. I'm very excited but I will post pictures later.

In the meantime, good night and happy knitting.

Addictive Handspun

2010-02-23T12:40:00.003-06:00

I can't stop knitting handspun.
I need to get back to my Olympic sweater but:

Tah DAH!

Isn't it cute?! It's so perfect to fit right in my purse and carry my travelling sock. Now I may need to make more and/or write the pattern because it's so cute, I can't stand it! The bag literally hadn't had the ends woven in longer than 2 minutes when I stuffed an in-progress sock into it and it is now awaiting me leaving the house so I can put it in my purse.

*sigh* Okay, back to the Olympic sweater. Then Crochet Night.

Olympic Knitting

2010-02-22T18:04:00.004-06:00

I've been stalking the Yarn Harlot's blog and watching for the Knitting Olympics. Finally, the time came and I signed myself up.
Then came the real issue. I had some yarn, that I had already swatched, that I wanted to knit up into a sweater. A pretty black Cardigan.
The yarn was Andean Silk from Knitpicks that I had picked up at our last Fiber Swap for our spinning guild. Someone had purchased it to knit into a sweater for their mother and it wasn't working out so they decided to sell the yarn. I couldn't stop petting it and holding it and I finally decided that I couldn't live without it.
The trouble was, I hadn't found a pattern that would fit me that used the amount of yarn I had, that also used the size needles I had.
Finally, I remembered something way back in my subconscious and I looked up Hey, Teach! I decided that I would knit it up with this beautiful yarn.
I cast on and knit my way up the back. (After a little math because the gauge I was getting was close but not the same as what was called for. I am actually knitting a size smaller than what I would normally choose.)
Today, I blocked the back. Here it is, preblocking.

I was feeling pretty good about my progress until I realized how little time is left and how much is left to be knit.
The good news? I'm knitting the fronts at the same time:

I'm already into the lace pattern. Really, this wouldn't be so much, but I'm altering the sleeves. I want full length, not lace sleeves. Meaning, I have a long way to go yet, in a not very long time.

And, last night, I was having an issue with the dark yarn. I needed some color so, I found this little ball of handspun. In color: Girly Girl, purchased at a friend's etsy shop. Hand over the Wool. It's very pretty but not super soft. It's rambouillet I believe, wouldn't you know it, I can't find the tag right now.

I started with a pattern in 101 Designer One-Skein Wonders for a little knitting bag and completely changed the pattern to something totally different, different stitch, different shape, etc.
To something that is now all mine.

It takes some convincing to not knit on this instead of the sweater, but the sweater must be finished. The Gold is on the line.

Unplugged

2010-02-19T14:41:00.006-06:00

I've been trying to write my poor little blog more often and of course, this week I have completely disappeared. I honestly didn't mean to. I went down to my parents last week on Thursday evening to help with the Fish Fry at their church on Friday. Yeah, busy, busy day. 2200 pounds of fish and we ran out at 6:00 pm. Anyway, then I decided to stay a bit longer to get to visit with my grandpa on his 85th Birthday which was on Sunday. Yes, he is a Valentine's Day baby. His name is Valentine as a matter of fact. Val if you know him, he actually hates his name.

Anyway, I had a blast with my mom and the animals and then my brother came out one day and we had some outside winter fun. I usually do nothing outside in the winter so it was a blast. Made me not hate the snow quite as much.

Here's the parental's dog out in the snow. (Actually after I was gone mom said he would go outside, then come in and look all over for me. When I wasn't there anymore, he would go lay in his kennel to sleep.)

My dad on the snowmobile. Making faces at the camera. Of course.

Apparently the snowmobile wasn't enough because my brother brought out the 4-wheeler as well. It was hard work driving it though.

hee hee, obviously.

Look at how the snow flips up too!

And of course, the sunrise behind the trees because I just couldn't resist.

Otherwise, all I've been doing is Olympics Sweater, all the time. More on that later.

Weather whether we like it or not.

2010-02-08T16:48:00.003-06:00

So lately, we've had some REALLY interesting weather here. Its been snow, ice, snow, ice, snow, snow, snow. Today (surprise, surprise) we're getting snow. This means that I've been cold pretty much all the time until I get into bed. It also means that I'm pretty sick of it.
So, I started a pair of handwarmers. Fingerless mitts, whatever you want to call them.
Unfortunately, the weather will not cooperate with the idea of taking pictures of these works-in-progress. You will have to just wait and see I guess. I can tell you, it's very pretty purple yarn and it is very, very soft.

In other news, I was given about 30 boxes of easter egg dye so today, I'm dyeing some yarn. Just enough for one pair of socks...for now. I can't wait to show you that too!

Well, I'm off to get some things done. Like check my yarn in the microwave. Ever wonder what people think of us?

Today's Goal: Get caught up.

2010-02-03T12:15:00.004-06:00

Yesterday was a kind of crazy day so I didn't get a whole lot of knitting in. I did manage to finish a Crochet project during crochet night but it needs desperately to be washed and blocked before it's ready for its blog debut.
Mostly I knit on my Lace Knee high socks. I still love them and so, it's going fast but right now, it just looks like a slightly longer leg than what you saw before. Oh well.
Today I plan to cast on my Rocky Butte Socks. I'm trying out some new (to me) yarn for my Rocky Butte socks and I am curious to see how it will turn out. I'm keeping it a secret until I know.
My other goal for today is to get my Ravelry projects page updated because it is getting ridiculous. I got a bit behind when we moved and it has only gotten steadily worse. Now I'm not sure I recognize most things on there so I've got to do something.
Well, I'm off to take pictures of knitting and yarn now.

The Bliss of Handspun

2010-02-01T17:41:00.002-06:00

About a month ago we had a little spinning gathering, not affiliated with a guild, just so some ladies from knit night could learn to spin. Well, we all got bitten by the spinning bug and a "long-term loan" wheel came home with me. It's also up for sale and I have to say, it's not going home with someone else. It's mine, all mine.

Anyway, then for my birthday, my hubby asked what I would like. I said: ROVING! immediately so I went online and purchased a couple of rovings for myself (from him).

I ended up purchasing 3 from Forest Fiber Works. (ugh! Fair warning, do not click that link unless you want to buy. Some gorgeous stuff there!) They were all somewhat green but different. When they arrived, I LOVE love loved two and the other, I was kinda meh about. I decided, since I was still getting acclimated to the wheel, to spin the one I was meh about. I have to say: "WOWEEEEE" It turned out so different than I imaged and absolutely beautiful. I actually got Sock yarn, which is what I was going for so I was in heaven.

I got about 490 yards out of it and I decided that it should be something special. It is:

This is what I was knitting in front of the fireplace at the mansion yesterday. The pattern is Lace Knee-Highs (Ravelry link) and I'm so excited I just can't stop knitting.

Hopefully I can get them done before the excitement wears off.

I'm trying to get back into the habit of posting, so hopefully you will be hearing from me more often. (Although probably not tomorrow since I have to leave the house early and won't get home until after Crochet Night)

Shamed into Action

2010-01-31T20:49:00.002-06:00

This weekend I had the joy of attending another spinning guild's retreat. Well, I was just there for one afternoon but still, it was a complete joy.

It was at a local mansion called Linden Hills and it was such a wonderful thing to sit next to the fireplace in a wingback chair in the music room knitting. It was a wonderful experience.

Anyway, that brings me to my current post. I was asked about my blog and reminded by friends that I haven't posted in a long time. I was shamed into posting. At least I have a picture to post. I took this picture a few weeks ago actually when there was actual light. Maybe one of these days I will get some light again so I can take some new pictures.

May I introduce you to Sedona (Ravelry link):

The lovely designer of this pattern was diagnosed with Cancer and as a support/prayer/whatever thing, several of us are knitting her two favorite patterns Sedona and Manhattan. I chose Sedona and have been knitting away on this lovely pattern since. It's actually quite addicting.

Well, I've been shamed into posting so...there you go.

I need to get back into the habit of posting regularly so who knows, maybe you'll hear from me soon!

Will you die of shock?

2009-11-24T10:19:00.003-06:00

Can you imagine! 2 posts in 2 days. You might all die of shock. If the frequency of posting isn't enough for you...

actual pictures?! Wow. This is my lovely Little Ruff from 101 One-Skein Wonders. (It's actually pictured on the upper right corner of the cover if you click the link)
So, the stats. Here we go.

Specs:
The Yarn: Bamboo and (I think) Merino blend roving purchased from Kashaknits.etsy.com that I spun into yarn. I was still really just learning to spin so it's pretty thick and thin and overspun but still very pretty.
The Needles: Size US 8 DPNs
The Pattern: Little Ruff from 101 One-Skein Wonders, as I mentioned
The Recipient: Me.
The Button: A wooden 1" button I had leftover from another project.
Notes: I did go up a needle size from the pattern with this because of the thick and thin yarn. It turned out beautifully though with a lovely shine from the bamboo.

It feels pretty good to actually finish something once in awhile. Even though it's been languishing.
Now let's talk about what is still on the needles, shall we? I got some lovely Deborah Norville Collection Serenity Sock Weight yarn from JoAnn Fabrics awhile back and it settled nicely into the stash. Then I remembered that in 2 weeks we are having our extended family's Christmas Celebration and we have a game with dice that we play to do a little gift exchange. I thought...wouldn't it be fun if there was a nice pair of handknit socks in there?

Yeah, crazy I know. I'm only a few weeks to Christmas and I'm pretty behind on that but I added in these socks anyway.

I'm knitting them into Monkeys and I think they're turning out pretty cute so far. I can make it. (I think)

If I don't have time to post tomorrow, a very Happy Thanksgiving to my friends here in America.

Still Knitting after all this time.

2009-11-23T15:15:00.002-06:00

Wow, how sad is it that my Little Ruff of Handspun sat for that many months in want of only a button. It was even Blocked already for crying out loud. Well, I found it in the basket this morning and felt sorry for it and as long as I had my sewing kit out anyway, it got its little button. Maybe someday we will have a decent day and I can take pictures.
It gets dark so early now and it has been grey for far too long. I feel like a sponge. When there is sun I want to soak it up!
Lately I've been focusing on Christmas knitting and organizing things here at our new home. It's been quite an adventure. We have more space but figuring out how to organize our mountains of junk in that space is always the trick. Plus things have been a bit weird because hubby's computer refuses to acknowledge the internet here. That means we have been fiddling with that but sharing the computer as well. Which means he has been underfoot a great deal in my office.
Things are slowly starting to settle in and hopefully the family turmoil will settle down for a bit too.
I'll try to get more info posted more often. Maybe even with some pictures once in awhile.