I've Moved

I decided to move my blog.



kraftie.wordpress.com

Who has the coolest SP8 pal ever?

ME!

Yes... SP8 is loooong over, but I got something in the mail today.

I've been awaitng some sock yarn that I'm supposed to test knit, so it was a complete shock when I realized it was from Valerie my old SP8 pal. I knew I liked her.

Color is called Christmas Tree and it's from Matahari Spinnery. Very, very pretty stuff. I'm half tempted to start spinning now since it IS a christmas color.

I love you Valerie!

More Acrylic!

Bought some acrylic today. All with projects in mind though.

The massive pound of acrylic are going into an afgahn for me. I already have an afgahn, but it's just to small so I'm going to start on a massive one cause I get really cold at night. :-D

Also some TLC which is going to be a scarf for my boyfriend. He wants the binary scarf from the latest knitty. You know.. he hasn't even seen a picture of the scarf, but he wants it because it's in binary, and he's a computer science major or something like that. He likes the computer stuff.

Also because I promised a picture of the recently completed handspun.....

Ta dA! It's pretty. The colors in the picture are very exact too.

It's 100% alpaca from Moonlight Meadow Farm and I bought it off them at the fiber fest last summer. Gorgeous stuff... 3oz... 310yards.

I wanted to make a hat, but the stuff is definitely a sock weight yarn. Makes me mad. I made it 3 ply hoping that I would get a worsted/light worsted, but no... sock weight.

I guess I just need to spin stuff a little thicker. I'm thinking it might make nice scarf though, maybe lacy. 310 yards should be enough for a scarf right? Opinions are welcome!

Well.. I'm off to start my acrylic afghan. I'll post when I actually have something to show.. hehe.

Another fun fur hat....

I've been a bad, bad blogger. I have nothing to show except another fun fur hat.

This one, two strands of yarn held together, PLUS! a strand of fun fur for the ribbing portion of the hat.

It's okay. Looks like your typical fun fur hat. It is a typical fun fur hat. I've actually finished the ribbing so I'm on the body of the hat. The nice thing about these hats is that they don't take long to do.

Why is there no cool knitting to show? I've become completely obsessed with my spinning. All I want to do is sit and spin. I finished plying some yarn today, about 310 yards, and it's drying right now it the bathroom. Once it dries I'll stick some pictures up. The water was very dark when I set the twist, so I'm hoping when it dries it will look the same as it did before it went into the water.

Knit From Your Stash 2007

Wendy from Wendy Knits! is doing a Stash bust kinda think in 2007. I'm so in.

Especially since I can still buy yarn.

The Rules:

Knit From Your Stash 2007

1. The Knit-From-Your-Stash-a-Thon will start January 1, 2007 and run through September 30, 2007 -- a period of nine months.

2. We will not buy any yarn during that period, with the following exceptions:

2.a. Sock yarn does not count. What? You think we are made of stone?

2.b. If someone asks for a specific knitted gift that we really and truly do not have the yarn for, we may buy yarn to knit that gift.

2.c. If we are knitting something and run out of yarn, we may purchase enough to complete the project.

2.d. We each get one "Get Out of Jail Free" card -- we are each allowed to fall off the wagon one time.

3. We are allowed to receive gifts of yarn.

4. Spinning fiber of any sort is exempt.

Muhahaha

It came yesterday. I was at work, so I didn't know until I got home after going out to dinner last night. Walked into the house and found it waiting right inside the doorway.

Before leaving for work everyday last week I asked my sister to make sure she signed for it if someone came. The bad thing about UPS is that they can come any time during the day, especially when I'm not home. The mailman, I know when he'll show up.

Well yesterday my sister didn't go to school cause she was sick. And again, before leaving for work I reminded her to answer the door if someone came with the wheel. She did. She was tired but stayed up just because I annoyed her so much. Then she gave up. Changed her mind, crawled into bed, and right when she started to fall asleep the doorbell rang. She was ticked, but she still got up and got the wheel for me. Gotta love her for that.

So of course I opened it, assembled everything then went to find the next exciting fiber to spin. I grabbed some alpaca from the fiberfest last summer. It was some hard stuff to spin. It's very soft and I was really trying to figure out how the wheel worked. Oh well... I think I've figured it out. Never fear! I haven't neglected my knitting. I'm still making major progress on Autumn in Oregon sock number 2.

Remember this?

Remember this hat?

I had to take out the decreases last weekend and make the hat body a little bigger. With the nasty cold weather we had last Thursday and Friday, the girl realized the hat didn't cover her ears all the way. It was PERFECT when she tried it on last month... but when the weather turned cold, she wasn't so happy.

It was an easy enough fix so I really didn't mind.

That's all I've been up to. I've done a lot of spinning, but I think I'm going to really work on this test knit sock that way I can count it for SAM2. This sock that I was test knitting... I'm currently on sock number two, but the pattern for it recently went up on her site and it's great so go check it out. She's even selling a cool sock kit with Mama-E's C*EYE*BER fiber sock yarn. Yea... good sock yarn. You know you want it. She's also selling the pattern by itself it you have more yarn than you can handle.

I'm still waiting on the spinning wheel to show. The company e-mailed me back and said that it should be here by Tuesday and if not to let them know so they could look into it. Yay... Tuesday is tomorrow. I really hope it shows up.

Scarf fringed.

The fringe has been added. It it's dye lot issues are now leaving my life forever.
Pattern: Hold two strands of yarn together, cast on a few, knit until you feel like stopping. Feel like adding fringe? Go for it.
Yarn: Caron Simply Soft Brites in color Lemonade held together with Violet colored Fun Fur from Lion Brand.

So I have this spinning obsession lately. All I want to do it sit around and spin. Oh... the colors... I love the colors.

I love Break.

Last day of exams today! YEA! The first one today was bad. No clue how well I did on it. In fact I feel the same way about all of my exams.

The only one that I know... is bad. BUT it was high enough that it didn't hurt my grade so I got the B- I needed to pass the class! (This is all I really cared about.) Hopefully my other grades will be high enough so that I keep that 3.0 I need.

I've ordered some things online recently. A lot of things actually. I decided last Friday night that I needed some knit picks circulars so that I could make socks two at a time. So I ordered my needles and some patterns. NO YARN! I didn't need my stash any bigger.

Then after I frogged an entire sock on Saturday I decided I needed a spinning wheel. (Why I decided this... I'm not sure.) But I think it had something to do with the fact that I decided I didn't want to take a spindle if I join the spinning guild. I wanted a portable wheel. This led to researching wheels.

Somewhere along my search I saw something reminding people to order early to get their things in time for Christmas. I panicked. I wanted a wheel before January... so that order was placed on Sunday. The wheel was shipped first thing Monday morning and along with the wheel came a $40 gift certificate to the store. I had to use it right away. You never know.. I might forget I had a gift certificate... So that order was placed Monday night (I only spend $1.40 over the certificate price so I paid shipping plus $2) I got fiber. Nice fiber. The fiber shipped Tuesday morning and it showed up on my door today. The last thing shipped and the first to arrive.

80 Merino/20 Kid. The color in this picture is exactly the way it looks.

70 Merino/30 Tencel. Again the color is pretty acurate, it's a little darker pink though.And last but not least. SILK! It's pretty... I took it out of the packaging to feel in and it was sticking on my horribly dried hands so it's staying in it's baggie until my hands are smoother.

Breast Cancer Yarn.

Everybody go here: Click me!

Then go buy the yarn. You know you want to because we all get excited over a good cause. THIS IS A GOOD CAUSE.

Go spend all your money because I know you guys love yarn.

Spot the error!

Can yoooou spot the mistake? I didn't notice it either. In fact, I was done with the scarf before one of the girls I tutor spotted it. She continued to harass me about it for the rest of the time I was there. It was a stupid mistake. I'm not one to worry about such things as dye lots. The skeins looked no different in ball form, but knitted up, oh you can tell. Note to readers: CHECK DYE LOTS. The left side of the scarf looks darker in the picture, but it's not because of the camera flash. The difference is that obvious in real light too.

Oh well.. the girl getting it doesn't care. I told her if anyone asks, tell them they're seeing things. lol.

Getting rid of Junk.

I threw away fiber today.

Yes, Fiber.

I had been spinning this up for awhile now, and I was amazed that the fibers were so short, and the shed everywhere. I kept spinning though and had almost two bobbins full of a very, very thin yarn. Today I started plying it. It was so, horribly scratchy. That and it was shedding all over me again.

Why on earth and I wasting my time spinning and plying yarn that I just wouldn't want to knit with. It's gross and scratchy. Most of the wool in the bag I bought was like this so I gave up. It went to the trash. I thought about passing it along to someone, but it was just too bad.

This fiber was bought at my first fiber festival, so I figure I just had no clue what I was doing back then. It was cheap fiber, I thought I was getting a deal. nope. I got crap. :-D

So then I drug out the massive (probably around a pound) bag of fiber that I got also at the first fiber fest. Same bag of crap. But this bag of crap looked much better from the outside so I had higher expectations for it. It smelled really bad, and felt horrible, like it hadn't really been cleaned properly. In fact I'm sure it smelled because it hadn't been washed right. This could have been fixed, but the fibers were just so short at some points it wasn't worth it.

I'm only buying roving from now on. It's a bit expensive for a reason. I've realized that.

Of course, these bags of crap were also purchased when I was only using Red Heart yarn. Ah.. how things have changed.

After purging my room of all nasty old fiber that wasn't worth my time I decided to ply some fiber I had been spinning on my drop spindle. It's some Cherry Tree Hill roving, and I'm still in complete love with the color. 20 yards. Not bad for 3 ply on a drop spindle.

The drop spindle is a pain though. I don't mind spinning on it, but I hate trying to get the yarn off the spindle once it's spun. If anyone knows how to solve this little issue let me know.

It's navajo plied and it's still really, really thin. I think I'm going to spin the rest of this up on the wheel.

I give up!

I give up on christmas knitting.

Totally give up.

After frogging an almost complete sock because it was way to small, I realized I just couldn't knit everything I wanted in the next 23 days. Impossible.

So I'm done. I'm going to keep working on the items, but they're going into a bin for the next holiday season. Should some gifts get done, they may be passed out, but we're not going to race anymore.

I'm going to ENJOY knitting.