Exciting, exciting.

Finished a square and cast on for another. There's such excitement in my life. :-P

Not this weekend, but the following I'll be helping out at Orientation for my college, I'm already dreading the fact that I won't be able to knit. Whatever will I do...ahh...

The sock with lines.

Here is my sock. I tried taking pictures from above, and the stripe I keep refering to just wouldn't show up.

It isn't "laddering" or anything. And the fabric where the stripe is is really tight, so I'm thinking that was my problem.

The sock just feels big though. But I've looked at other people wearing their socks, and some of them seem big.

Just how is a sock supposed to fit? I've never worn hand-knit socks before. I think mine are too big, but what am I comparing them too? The skin-tight, one-size-fits-all socks I buy at the store?

I haven't frogged this sock yet. I've started Pomatomus, put it on waste yarn, and all's going well so far.

The needles I use for my socks are Susan Bates DPNs. All my DPNs are those brand. Most of my needles in general are Susan Bates. I just love the metal needles.

I was working on a charity square yesterday, and it made the coolest swooshing sound. It was great. Of course I was working on this square while I was tutoring. It isn't really tutoring. The kids have packets that they have to do. My job is more of a babysitting job. Make sure they do it, which usually involves chasing them through the house, checking their work, and helping them when they get stuck. So if work is going well and the kids are doing good... I just sit there. Well, the mom and 2 out of 4 daughters know how to knit. The younger of the two also knows how to crochet because I taught her sometime last summer. She's right handed and everyone she knows is left so they were having a harder time teaching her. So I was plugging away on one of my squares, and the younger of the two knitters decided she really wanted to knit. I haven't seen the girl knit in about a year. She stopped whenever the yarn store I used to go to closed. She ran up, grabbed her bulky yarn, some fun fur, and what had to be size 6-8 DPNs, and casted on for a scarf. She wanted to learn my way of casting on though. I use the long-tail cast on, which she decided was much faster than knitting the stitches on. I showed her twice, and she got it right away. That girl is definitely amazing.

I was right!

I was right! There are 4 ounces of buffalo stuff there. I'm starting to think there may be other things mixed in with it.

We may never know.

ETA: Yup... it is a blended fiber. So I have 4 ounces of buffalo/wool/alpaca.... my other favorite fibers, only one which I have previously spun. :-D

Stupid sock...

My sock is making me mad again. I think I'll frog.

I'm always frogging the stupid socks.

I think I just can't knit socks on DPNs... I love DPNs. They make me happy. Everything goes great on them when I'm working with acrylic, but this sock yarn... it just isn't working. I have bizarre stripes down the socks, which I think may be from pulling to tight, and the sock just feels loose. Maybe that's how it's supposed to feel. I don't know. I'll deal with it in the morning.

I think I need a new pattern. Maybe I'll give Pomatomus another try. This time. When I make socks... I'm so swatching. I think I'll get out that cheap acrylic sock yarn I bought too... that way I get the first real pair of completed socks on not-so-amazing yarn. So I won't feel bad about it.

We'll see what tomorrow brings. I have tons of sock patterns laying around. I thought about making some out of worsted weight arylic just for the practice. Why not... I've got loads of it.

More Fiber Fest Pictures.

I had my great plan of showing different purchases on different days. (Maybe because I didn't want it to seem like I bought so much. Who knows.) Well the internet went down again today, for the entire day, so I give up and I'm just going to post them all at once, minus the alpaca that was shown at some odd hour of the morning yesterday.

The reason I bought so much? I think a large part is due to the fact that I don't really have any stores around me that sell fiber in fiber form. The one that does has a wide variety of color: white, brown, and that's about it. I love the fiber show because of all the colors! They just make me happy. Almost as happy as when I wander around looking at Red Heart. After using the natural fibers, the only thing that brings me back to the acrylic is the colors.

The colors were my weakness... that and the exotic (I guess you could call them that) fibers. I'm sure you'll see why.

First off i really like red. It's just so pretty. Who couldn't pass up those colors? I wouldn't call this roving "exotic". It's wool. Merino top, but it comes from sheep which don't exactly scream exotic animal. It's pretty though, and it's softer than other wool that I've worked with.

From the same vendor came this. Also very, very pretty. I'm really interested to see how this yellow thing will spin up. Funny story about this vendor. I was talking to them about sheep. I saw that it was Merino so I asked about how Merino was pronounced. Why? Because when I was at the zoo a few weeks back the person feeding the Merino sheep pronounced it weird. I corrected him, but deep down wondered if I really knew what I was talking about. So I bothered the vendor about it. The sheep I saw at the zoo, she had sold to the zoo. Small, small world.

Anyways!

More alpaca! I liked the colors. Bright, happy colors that are much prettier in real life. I had the hardest time picking out which ones I wanted. These are hand-dyed and no two are the same. She had some spun up and it just looked gorgeous. She told me to send her some pictures once I get it spun up so I'll definitely have to do that.Llama. It was on sale. What more could I say? The colors are so pretty too.... I've got this thing for natural colors right now. The white, and the brown, and the black, all in one bag... It makes me happy. I'd say Llama is a bit on the not-so-common side?This. Is not common. That I know. I've tried finding it online. I've seen advertisements in magazines talking about how unbelievably warm it is. How it's soooooo much warmer than wool. Well. I've seen it online. It was very expensive. Online 2 ounces of roving go for about 20 dollars. If you want 2 ounces of yarn, its 48 dollars. After seeing this I thought no way I'd ever buy it. A little out of my price range. But look how pretty. It's dyed too which I'm still trying to figure out. Buffalo.... I've always wanted buffalo yarn. I don't know how many ounces I have. There's nothing on it telling me how many ounces, and I haven't weighed it myself. My personal guess is at least 4 ounces. Probably 4-6. I really don't know though. Comparing it to the Llama, my guess is they're pretty similar in the amount of fiber. I have 8 ounces of Llama, so 4-6 ounces of buffalo seems like a reasonable guess. I think I'm going to send an e-mail to the person I bought it off of and see if they know the ounces. They might, the did have several of these "magic stripes" roving. I know they were selling already spun yarn at their booth and had a set price per ounce.

We'll see what I find out.

Bought some cotton today too for all the dishcloths we've been making at the charity knitting group. Bought a whole pound of Peaches and Creme in some really nice Spring colors. Maybe I'll post a picture of it tomorrow. That is assuming that the internet is working.

Fiber Fest-Part I

Went to the Great Lakes Fiber Show early Saturday in search of sock yarn. Well... I found sock yarn, but didn't buy any. Aren't you proud of me?

However, I did buy lots and lots of roving. Lots and lots is a bit of an understatement. What can I say? I like bright colors... they are my weakness.

One of my missions of the day was to find out what to do about my squeaky spinning wheel and get some oil for it. That's the main reason I've avoided my wheel lately. So I talked to someone about that and bought a kit with replacement parts for my wheel. These are all the parts that I'm afraid I'm going to break or lose, so I'm quite happy to have this. Now I can tighten things without being afraid of breaking them! (I'm paranoid)

So bought that kit off her, and decided to buy some alpaca from her as well. Never spun, or even used alpaca, before. It's such a pretty color brown. I've had this thing for browns and other natural colors lately. None of the fiber I bought was too horribly priced. I'd pay more if I bought it on the internet so why not?

The stuff that was more on the expensive side was so expensive because of the amazing dye jobs.

I got some gorgeous rovings, but because blogger is being a pain, and in order to entertain you all weekend I'm going to post a picture of different fiber I bought each post until all is shown. I'm to see if I can finish most of Adamas in the upcoming week, and I don't think I'll post too many pictures of the shawl because it really doesn't change much from day to day.

So here's my picture for today.
Lovely colored alpaca. I love the white mixed in. I don't know why... but I do. It gives it little blips in the yarn which can be fun sometimes. The lady selling it showed me how it looks spun up... definitely beautiful.

I've been on such a natural color kick lately. Naturals and brights. Haha.. what a combo.

I can explain!

It is currently 1pm on Friday

I know it says this was posted on Thursday, but that's when the draft was saved. I was too lazy to upload the pictures again.


I started this post yesterday (Thursday) after recieving something in the mail from my SP. Which reminds me, I really need to send something to my SP. I should do that Monday. I have the package, I just haven't shipped it.

Anyways. I got online and uploaded my pictures to blogger. No sooner than the pictures were uploaded I received a call from my boss begging me to come into work early. I had 10 minutes to get there and it usually takes around 15. So I saved my post as a draft and took off.

After work I had plans to go to the drive-in movie theater with my boyfriend. We made these plans sometime at the beginning of the week. Of course, those of you living in Ohio (and surrrounding states) are aware that a nasty storm came through yesterday. We didn't think it would matter. What's a little rain? Besides, the county we were going into wasn't even being mentioned! No problem! So we went. Sky was clear, weather was nice. We sat around waiting for the movie to start and off to the left the sky got completely black. To the right, blue sky with zero clouds. Of course the evil black sky also had lighting which was pretty frequent so we decided it would be a good idea to head home.

Heading home was probably a bad idea. We would have been much better off hanging out there until it blew over.

Instead we hydroplaned the whole way home. There were definitely some turns on 21 when I thought my car was going off the road. I couldn't see anything. Didn't feel like my car was under control. The inch or so of water on the road prevented any normal driving. That was at the worst of the storm though. It cleared up a lot more later, but the areas we were driving into had tons of water. It was just sitting on the road. We came up to our exit and hit the brakes, but after realizing that there was another few inches of water on the road, and my car wasn't going to stop in one piece, we decided just to get off at the next exit. I wasn't going to wreck my car. So we called my dad so he could tell us how to get home since we were now lost.

Fun times.

When we did get home I shut my computer off because of all the lightning and I didn't turn it back on until I got up this morning. I was ready to update my blog and appologize to my SP for not posting about her extremely cool gift earlier. The internet was down. Again. It's down quite a lot lately. Several times a week.

It's back now though so I'm finally getting this posted!

Like I said before I got a package from my SP yesterday. It's what got me out of bed actually. The doorbell rang and I sat up freaking out because I'm in my pajamas. Then I realized that it must be the mail man! It was! So I snatched my package off the doorstep and ran back to my room. It was promptly opened.

Here are the contents:

Time for close-ups because they're so much fun!

First off: Soap. Peppermint and Strawberry Banana. The Peppermint does smell amazing. The entire box and everything in it smelled like Peppermint. Strawberry Banana smelled very good as well.
Next: Pride and Prejudice. I'm glad I have this book now. I will read it even if I don't get around to it for awhile. ;-) After falling in love with the book over the audio version, I'm glad to have it forever in text.

Mmmmm.... Tea. As mentioned before. I like tea. A lot. I'm trying to use up my "crappy" tea like no other. The more I try though, the more I realize every tea has it's place in my heart. Except for fruit and almond. I hate that flavor. This tea is insanely cool though because it's tea leaves. I love tea in leaf form! If it's in leaf form I can use my cute little teapot shaped thing with the holes in it! I don't know what it's called. lol. Definitely can't wait to try this tea.

Last but not least: Cootie catcher note cards. How cool is that. They're notecards, but they're cootie catchers! AH! The bright colors on the box made me very happy. It's the coolest box. I'm going to play with them sometime in the future. Not right now though, because I must finish a baby sweater! (or at least work on it)

FO!

Another small FO. Had our little Charity knitting/crochet group thing last night. The lesson: how to crochet dishcloths. I was given some cotton yarn because I didn't know to bring any and this was what resulted.

I love the yarn. Not so much the pattern, a little too simple for me. But I love the color of that yarn! Of course the reason she got the yarn so cheap was because it was discontinued. Of course! Just my luck.

It's still pretty though.

I got more work done on my sock while at graduation tonight. We got there early so I had time to work on it before the ceremony began. It's not tight enough for my liking but now I know what to change next time around. Then again, my Jaywalker was too tight, and now it is no more. So what's perfect? I mean, of course it's not going to fit like store bought socks. Maybe my sock is okay.

I will finish this sweater!

I will, I will, I will. I just don't want to. I enjoy the whole knitting process, but this weaving in ends and attaching parts is killing me. I haven't even started sewing the parts on yet, I'm just weaving in.

I will finish though... eventually.

Adamas is tempting me though. Speaking of Adamas... I dropped a stitch last night while watching Leno. I was laughing too hard and just dropped the needles. Or maybe I sneezed, I can't quite remember what I did but the needles were dropped. (ETA: Did I ever mention that I just don't like lifelines? I'm knitting this shawl without the lifelines and stitch markers... they just annoy me.) Pat me on the back because some how I was able to pick things up and keep going. Can't even tell I dropped them in the first place. I love my crochet hook. It saved the day.

Maybe I'll go work on Adamas and worry about the sweater another day. A little each day will keep me sane.

I'm just "looking"

I went to school today to pick up my books for next semester. Turns out they're not in until mid July. So I've got awhile. On my way home I decided to drop by that yarn store that I really don't like. The one that didn't have tons of sock yarn, at least they didn't have tons of Regia when I last checked. Of course, when I was looking for sock yarn nothing compared to Regia (because that was the only "fancy" sock yarn that I had purchased).

This time I was looking for Trekking XXL and if I didn't find it I was going to swear off this store forever. I thought that they might have it, although I expected it to be overly priced.

I was wrong. They had some Trekking. Not tons, maybe 3 different colors, but one of them was gorgeous. It was reasonably priced though. The exact same price I found it for online. I kept looking around and found something else. Sockotta. In far cooler colors than the Trekking that this store carried. So I picked up two skeins.
They're so pretty! The colors are pretty accurate. The beauty of it is, you can get a pair of socks out of one skein.

I love yarn.

Almost done!!!

Almost done with the knitting portion of my baby sweater. I'm starting the decreases on my second sleeve now and if I hold the little sweater parts together it actually looks like a sweater! Who woulda thunk it.

Well. I'm going to go see if I can finish it. I'm hoping to start sewing it together tonight.

Yarn...

Everyone is knitting with Trekking XXL stuff. At first I was like oooh... pretty colors. But now that everyone is doing it I feel like I should run out and buy the stuff.

Where on earth do you find it though!? My LYS suck. They don't have the cool yarn that everyone elses LYS has. I haven't checked said LYS for trekking, but when I checked them for regia they had a whole 5 balls of it in mismatched colors. Can't even make a pair of socks! That and it's twice the price of what I've seen it sell for online.

I want to buy some for my SP. I've seen the perfect colorway. If anyone knows any sites that have it pretty reasonable (aside from e-bay) let me know. I'm too afraid of e-bay.

I'm going to go knit my shawl! (the baby sweater's getting to me and I really don't want to look at it right now. :-D )

Raglan Seams?

Ok, so I'm working away at the baby sweater. I started one of the sleaves last night and I started reading ahead because weird things were happening. First, it never told me to bind off the front of the sweater. I'm not sure if I just didn't understand the directions, or if I wasn't supposed to bind off. The picture definitely saved me. Thankfully. Looked at the picture, saw what they did, and changed the directions so it worked.

Now it says something like this:

Sew 3 raglan seams, leaving left front raglan seam open.

First I thought this was some sort of fancy seam, but because I couldn't find anything about it online I'm going to assume it's just a regular seam.

I'm off to work on the sleaves. I'm hoping to finish those this weekend and maybe sew up this sweater so I can focus on Adamas.

I heart my SP

So I decided I was going to be in touch with nature today so I stuck my knitting in a bag, grabbed my cell phone, something to drink, and then tossed it on the counter. I figured I should get the mail rather than leave it in the mailbox all day.

On my way to the mailbox I started to rain. GAH! I finally though the rain was stopping. That's all it's done this week! Rain!

Well... this leads me to my point. I had mail from my SP.

Tea! TEA! I love tea! I've always been a big Lipton fan, but I never knew they had the flavors that my SP sent me. Caramel and Cookies & Cream. It's amazing how many different kinds of tea are out there. She also sent me some organic tea, green tea (which I love), Irish breakfast (which I also love), and other ones which I've never heard of but I'm dying to try.

Definitely made my day. Thanks SP!

Which reminds me. I've been on a quest to find things that will be perfect for my SP. I have a feeling I'll buy everything at once and send them over a period of time. I'm hoping to pick up some things for my SP at the upcoming fiber festival. How could I not find something for my pal there? It's a fiber festival! They have everything!

Another square

Another square is done. I'm up to having three finished now. So that puts my club up to about five squares total, at least that I know of. I'm getting sick of fancy squares. None of them really turn out to the size that I want them. This last one was perfect though. Exactly 8 inches by 8 inches. I might make some plain garter stitch ones, they just go so fast.

I really like the last pattern I did though. Maybe I'll make garter stitch and this weird purl/knit square thing. Who knows, Maybe I'll just make four different patterned squares. The ripple looking one, the double seed stitch, this purl/knit square thing, and just plain garter. Or I could do regular seed stitch. Maybe I'll just make up index cards with the patterns I like and how many I should cast on using my size 8s and my Red Heart to make life easier. My one square is 7.5 wide, but it stretches like no other, so it would work in a blanket. And it would be cool to have some patterned squares in a blanket instead of all garter.

Surprise!

Look! A FO! Who would have thought. This is a scarf that I started a few weeks ago. I'm not big on tracking actual start dates, but I know I started it in the month of May because I made a big deal about the green in the scarf. Well here it is photographed on my green comforter. I'm so proud of myself for using green.

Does the scarf look short to you? It seems so short to me but it's 40 some inches which is exactly the length the girl who is getting it wanted. She wanted a scarf that was her arm length, that way when it hung down it would hit where her hands do at her side. Quite ingenious. I'd never thought of it that way before. Well, she's 10, which made the scarf go much quicker seeing how it's half the length the pattern called for.

Pattern close up! Love the woven thing.

This pattern is called Long and Skinny and was out of the Knit Scarves! book. I love those books. Well... I love the options they bring to me. Done on my Denise Interchangeable Needles, size 10.5. Made out of quality Red Heart. Most of the yarn came from my stash which is even better. I only had to buy the dark purple and red because I didn't have the right shades of dark purple and red in my stash already. Of course I have tons left. I think I'll make some charity scarves, maybe some hats, or even mittens. I like mittens.

I also have some scarf ideas that I found in one of those magazines I subscribe too and it says I need six colors, so I might just use the same colors I used for this scarf because they look great together. So bright and happy like.

More Podcasts

These are some other ones that I liked.

FiberCast is pretty cool. It covers all the important "fiber" related stuff which I just love.

It's a Purl, Man is just funny. It is marked explicit though so be warned.

KnitCast has lots of interviews which I think is great. Nothing better than interviews.

Knitting News Cast. It has news about knitting. Duh.

KnitTunes plays music which is great to listen to while knitting.

Math4Knitters. It's great because the hostess goes over math things that deal with knitting.

Secret Knitting is pretty cool too. They don't tell you what you're knitting. It's a surprise. How great is that.

Time2Knit is another book knit blog thing. They play books to listen to while knitting. Three cheers for that!

The other ones I listed are good too and worth checking out. They might not be for you, but they aren't bad.

I've done lots of knitting on the baby sweater. It's starting to confuse me so I'm blaming the pattern.

Podcasts

So last night I gained a new obsession: podcasts. I've been toying with the Cast On website for awhile trying to get them to play. Turns out the reason it wasn't working for me what my whole impatientness.

I went exploring last night, downloaded iTunes and proceeded to download many knitting podcasts. I've already unsubscribed to two of them because they just sucked. I won't mention them here though. They were okay, but not for me.

I still have tons to go through and as I find ones I like I'll list them over in the side bar. If it's some real serious love, maybe, just maybe, I'll post a review.

First off, Cast On is great. I've listened to just a few of the first episodes, but it's definitely great. I've heard so many great things on that one from reading the blogs of others too.

Second I found CraftLit. I like knitting, and books. So it's just great for me. I've started through the first episodes and I like it so far. She does some quick talking about her then she jumps into books. The first couple episodes have the recording of Pride & Prejudice. It's great. I didn't listen to it tons though because I'm reading P&P for the first time and I don't want the podcast to ruin it for me. If you like books, it's pretty cool. There's more from the stories than actual knitting content, but if you like stories, they're great to knit to.

Links are on the side and you don't need a podcast to check them out. I definitely don't have one.

I love tea

Because there's no new exciting knitting to show since earlier this morning when I updated I'm showing you my present I got in the mail.

My aunt sent me tea. I love tea. A lot. It's almost to an obsessive point. Kinda like yarn...lol.

So yes. It's pretty good tea too. And because I'm so tea obsessed I decided I was going to grow my own herbs to make tea this summer. They're growing too. The mint seems to be getting tangled up in itself but I'll blame it on it's vine like qualities. The lemon balm is doing pretty well too. My strawberries are another story. I wasn't watering my plants like I was supposed to. I was very afraid I would over water, so I underwatered. My dad has been making fun of me for it too. I was underwatering that much. :-D

The "improvised" baby sweater

So the pattern says something about knit x number of rows of the ridge pattern through the x...
Through x? I took that as meaning up to x, then stop. If not the pattern wouldn't have looked like the picture. But then I though, why would they put instructions after the x if we don't use them? So when I needed another inch I used that after the x part. I didn't use the whole thing though, stopped once I got to the 60 rows that the pattern said I should knit it for. Well.. the pattern technically said I was supposed to knit for 50 rows, but I assumed it was a typo seeing as how most patterns don't say knit for 54 (50, 66) rows. Usually when the size gets bigger, the numbers get bigger, not smaller. Maybe I shouldn't assume, but I assumed that the 50 should have been a 60. What I did doesn't look phenominal, but it looks decent enough. I figured it was just a repeat of knit and purl rows so what's the worst that could happen? I have a ridge. The "improvising" I'm refering to is the wide ridge along the top underneigth the white. In the whole scheme of things there was going to be a wide ridge there anyways, mine's just a row wider. No big deal as long as I do the same thing on the front and the ridges line up. At least that's my game plan cause I'm not ripping. I'm not having a baby, and I don't even know the mother who's getting this so I'm not too concerned. Besides, it's using up the mounds of scrap yarn thrown under my bed. I think I'll be making more scrap yarn baby sweaters this summer.

Did I mention this is all I've really worked on over the last few days? Yup... just this. One project. What a shocker that is.

They LIED!

So I was over joyed to find out who my person was for SP8. I emailed them to a point where I was afraid they were terrified of me. Then my SP8 hostess emailed me to tell me she had to change things and I got a new SP8. So I obviously got messages in my blog from the person who thought she had me, but now that's changed so I've still yet to be contacted by the person who really has my name. I guess it's understandable though seeing as how they probably got theirs changed around too.

Now I have a new person to stalk! YAY!

Here's a picture. Of the baby sweater. It's all I've been working on lately. This is the back of it. The pattern says something about working through the + sign but mine won't be long enough at that point so I'll be making stuff up to get to 7 and 3/4 inches. :-D

SP8

I just found out not 10 minutes ago who my person is for SP8, and I'm super thrilled. I've been bouncing around the house and I'm quite excited for this thing to get started. Now I just get to wait for the person who got my name to send me an e-mail.

Whoever got my name... HI!

I was just ready to write a blog complaining about how I really wanted to know who my SP8 was but now I know.

AH.. super excited.

I should post a picture but I haven't taken any lately. Tomorrow I will, I'm off to watch Leno right now and work on the baby sweater.

The Zoo

As mentioned before I had Prom last weekend. For our Sunday activity we decided we would go to the zoo. The Cleveland Zoo to be more specific. Normally I wouldn't blog about something like this seeing as how when you think of the zoo there usually isn't knitting content, but my dear friends, I have knitting, or well fiber, related content.

First off Sheep. Seen below. I got to pet them too. They felt awfully spongy to me but what do I know.

Then, In the Australia Section of the zoo I spotted this. A spinning wheel! I got overly excited and I'm pretty sure I squealed. Lucky my boyfriend already knows I'm nuts so it didn't shock him too much. Upon closer examination of the spinning wheel I came to the conclusion it looks a hell of a lot like the Ashford Traditionals. Exactly like the one I have at home, except darker and older looking. Then I made the whole Ashford/Australia connection and it didn't seem so out of place anymore.

This is a picture of a kangaroo. I liked it because of the baby in the kangaroo's pouch. Isn't everyday you see that.

I have done lots of knitting lately. I've started a baby sweater, the infamous Adamas shawl and I'm still working on many other items. Finished up another square for charity too but that's just a boring old square and doesn't make for interesting blog content. When my shawl is a little bigger, I'll show it. Right now I'm on my second repeat of the Body Chart. Speaking of the shawl I noticed the coolest thing with the yarn today. There's a rainbow in my shawl. Seriously. There's some very subtle varigated-yarn-changy-color thing and there are little mini rainbows throughout the shawl. I've now fallen in love with the yarn and want to order it in mass quantities. I love KnitPicks Shadow. Maybe that's why it's called "shadow"... the mini rainbows.

YARN!

So the mailman dropped this box on the doorstep while I was on the phone with my boss this morning. I crawled out of bed later than usual this morning. The lack of sleep from Prom over the weekend wore me down.

Such a small box for the fact that there were supposed to be 14 skeins of yarn in it. So of course I worried.
All the yarn was crammed into this little bag. I had to re-twist some of the skeins up after taking them out of the bag because they had come undone while being shoved into the bag.

Here's my lovely yarn. I like all the bright colors. A lot. My sister's decided she likes 4 of the skeins and that they have all of "her" colors in them. I offered to make her socks and she told me she just wanted a bracelet. Haha... no. I liked it, which is why I bought it. I might make her socks, then if there's any left, we'll talk about a bracelet. I guess I could always buy more for her or me for that matter. There will always be
more sock yarn in the world. (Lots more)

Here's a fishy cookie. I liked it so I took a picture. So cute.

Another Color

I've added another color to the woven scarf. This is the one with the white and green I showed in the last post I believe. I didn't choose these colors, they were the same ones that were shown in the picture of the book. I'm really liking these colors too.

I tried to get the colors as close as I could to the ones in the book. So far it looks pretty decent. I think I'm going to add another color now and start the next row.

Soooooooo close.

So the radio station just had a contest thing, and I rushed to call in, must be caller number seven. Don't really care about the group performing the mini concert thing, but it would be cool to go no matter what. I was caller number 6. One away from caller 7. GAH!

This is my new project, and look, there's green! GREEN! On my GREEN Bed!

I didn't have much project spectrum last month. A new car came to live with us, and it was perfect for project spectrum April, but my mom would have killed me if I took a picture of it in the garage and then put it on my blog. As luck has it my camera was never around when the car was out of the garage. It's an orange '73 Volkswagen Super Beetle. If I ever get a picture I'll post it. If not, maybe I'll go steal one from my sister's blog.

My yarn.

This is my yarn I made. The thicker of the two is on the right, the thinner on the left. It's a nice grey/brown looking now that it's been spun out. I have two of each so far and there's still some roving left to spin.

My yarn still hasn't showed that I ordered from KnitPicks. I'm getting impatient with it. I picked a somewhat complicated pattern to do for Knit the Classics and I need all the time I can get.

Speaking of Knit the Classics, I can't track down the book pride and prejudice for the life of me. I'm going to borrow it from the library, and I have three holds out on three different copies, and they're all overdue. So I ended up getting the book on CD. I'll listen to that until I can get a copy of the book, then I might just read the book aswell.

A FO.

Well I feel like I've got nothing accomplished this week. My first week with no school and nothing to show for it except this scarf.

oh, and I've spun some yarn up with the spinning wheel. Then I wound it into skeins with my brand new niddy-noddy! That was quite exciting actually.

So now I have four skeins of yarn, of the lovely blue/purple/white that I'm not so fond of anymore. It looks pretty grey when it's all spun together. There's a ton of it too. I have about 150 yards of the thicker stuff. Which is somewhere between a worsted weight and a bulky (I think, never actually did the wpi). It's amazing how much my spinning has changed from the first bobbin to the last. The first was thin compare to the first spinning I did on a drop spindle, but the rest of the bobbins were all really thin, almost half of the first.

I don't even know how many yards I have of the thinner stuff. I tried to count, but there's so much of it I lost track and interest. No clue what I'm going to do with all this. I think I'll be making a scarf or two, maybe a shawl with the thinner yarn. I still have some roving left to spin so I'll probably have another two skeins of the thinner yarn when I'm all done.

Unfortunately I can't get a decent picture of it at 11:42 pm. So I'll try to get one tomorrow showing the two thicknesses. I have a feeling everything I spin is going to end up in a scarf. The thinner stuff is almost sock weight, but I'd be afraid to make socks out of handspun yarn... then again, if it gets destroyed I wouldn't be too heartbroken... there's just so much of it! I never would have imagined I could get this much yarn out of 8 oz of roving. Never. Heck, this makes me wonder how much yarn I'll get out of the purple/orange stuff living in my closet. It weighed in at a pound. Twice as much.

My order from Knitpicks hasn't come... I'm quite sad. It's been shipped though! So I'm waiting... and I have a feeling I'll be waiting for awhile. I'm sure as soon as I give up, it'll show.

SP8 Questionnaire

1. What is/are your favorite yarn/s to knit with? What fibers do you absolutely *not* like?

I love natural fibers but I have no problems with acrylic. I do not like the "fancy" or "fuzzy" yarns though.

2. What do you use to store your needles/hooks in?

I have a couple different cases that I keep them in. Some are just thrown in my basket though.

3. How long have you been knitting? Would you consider your skill level to be beginner, intermediate or advanced?

I've been knitting for about 2 1/2 years and I would consider my skill level to be in the intermediate to advanced area. I'm not afraid of scary patterns if that's what you're asking.

4. Do you have an Amazon or other online wish list?

Nope, thought about making one of those though.

5. What's your favorite scent? (for candles, bath products etc.)

I like fruity scents, vanilla, and mints.

6. Do you have a sweet tooth? Favorite candy?

I have a small sweet tooth. Favorite candy would have to be anything with chocolate (especially dark chocolate).

7. What other crafts or Do-It-Yourself things do you like to do? Do you spin?

I crochet, knit, and spin and that's about it.

8. What kind of music do you like? Can your computer/stereo play MP3s? (if your buddy wants to make you a CD)

I listen to mostly country music but I like almost anything excluding rap. And yes, my computer can handle MP3s.

9. What's your favorite color? Or--do you have a color family/season/palette you prefer? Any colors you just can't stand?

I like almost any color, my favorites are reds and purples though. I'm also a big fan of earth tones.

10. What is your family situation? Do you have any pets?

I live with my parents and my little sister, I'm a college student, and we have cats and fish.

11. Do you wear scarves, hats, mittens or ponchos?

A poncho is the only thing I won't wear.

12. What is/are your favorite item/s to knit?

I've become obsessed with socks, although I've never actually finished one.

13. What are you knitting right now?

I'm working on another sock, a scarf, and some charity projects.

14. Do you like to receive handmade gifts?

Who doesn't like handmade gifts?

15. Do you prefer straight or circular needles? Bamboo, aluminum, plastic?

I prefer circluar, but I don't mind straight. I prefer aluminum but I don't mind plastic and wood.

16. Do you own a yarn winder and/or swift?

I've got the yarn winder, but not the swift.

17. How did you learn to knit?

Taught myself in about an hour (knit, purl, and cabling). Denise thinks I have problems. :-D

18. How old is your oldest UFO?

Maybe three weeks. I wouldn't really consider it a UFO though.

19. What is your favorite holiday?

I'm a big fan of Easter because that's when the stores have all the good candy.

20. Is there anything that you collect?

Not really, I tend to hoard tea, and mugs though.

21. Any books, yarns, needles or patterns out there you are dying to get your hands on? What knitting magazine subscriptions do you have?

I'm still looking for a sweater pattern that would look nice on my body, and I'd like to come across some addi turbos. As far as magazine subscriptions I get Creative Knitting, Knit Simple, and Interweave Knits.

22. Are there any new techniques you'd like to learn?

Not really.

23. Are you a sock knitter? What are your foot measurements?

I like socks! My foot is weird though and I have a hard time finding patterns to fit them without lots of adjustments. My foot itself is 8.5 inches long, but 9.5 around at the widest part. And my leg where most average socks come up to is about 13.5.

24. When is your birthday? (mm/dd)

11/21

Yarn Diet blown...

Well Looks like my Yarn diet is over. I decided I wanted to make a shawl for knit the classics, but I had no yarn. So I bought some, and a pattern. Of course I was purchasing yarn of KnitPicks, so why not spend a little extra and get the free shipping? I never knew just how much yarn you could buy for 40 dollars. I bought a ton. Not quite a ton, but 14 skeins is quite a bit if I do say so myself. I was yarn shopping last weekend and saw sock yarn for 22 dollars... Yet I bought how much for 40?

Unfortunately.. I can't remember what I bought, and I bought it less that an hour ago. So it should be quite the surprise when I get it in the mail. lol. I do remember most of what I ordered, I just changed my mind so many times I've forgotten a few specific colors that I ordered.

I'll be sure to post when it comes.

A small FO

Started and finished an 8 inch square for charity today. This is the same one I frogged on Saturday. Did it in no time at all too! Gotta love quick projects.


I've also casted on for my second square.

I have a feeling I'll be making most of these squares, but hey, if it gets rid of my stash and helps people, all the better.

I came home today ready to post a picture of a green UFO I was working on, only to take it out and realize I've finished it already. Huh. How could I forget something as huge as that?

Because It was Asked

The fiber festival I will be going to next month is called the Great Lakes Fiber Show.

It's held on May 27th and 28th at the Wayne County Fairgrounds in Wooster, Ohio.

Their address:
199 Vanover St.
Wooster, OH

Their website can be found here.

I went last year, and it was great. Roving everywhere. However I made the mistake of not buying a roving that I liked because I wanted to "look aroud first". Big mistake. 20 minutes later when I went back to get it... it was gone.

Tons of fiber. It was everywhere. Prices are fairly reasonable too. There's always the horribly expensive stuff, but I got a pound of stuff to dye for $15 last year. I don't have to card it, but I'm carding it anyways because I think it'll be easier for me to spin.

By the way, if you go up to the festival. There's a group that's from Michigan. That's where my lovely blue/purple/white/brown mass of roving came from. And they had tons of other colors. I think they'll be back this year too.

If you don't know how to spin there's a spinning 101 class. All the classes are on the website and there are some great ones.