Nerd Wars Tournament 5

What have I been up to? Well, lots of things. One of those rather time consuming and just as awesome things is Nerd Wars.

The basic premise of Nerd Wars is that you are on a team that centers around some kind of specific Nerdy-subject (sci-fi, science, books, all kinds of things). And over a period of 3 months you craft things to meet challenges which earn your team points.

I joined up with Club 33 which is the Disney team because Disney is awesome, it worked perfectly to build excitement for my trip, and it has so many great ways to connect projects back to the team (bonus points).

Here's what I made:

And one scarf particularly awesome lace scarf that I can't show here because its a gift for someone who may read this.

Today the next tournament started!

I think I have too many things to do.

As is too often the case I have one again neglected to post anything here for quite some time. Fail. The past few months have felt just insanely busy. Tis the season!

First and foremost work really really gets in the way of all of the things I really want to do. And to make matters worse my work doesn't stop at 40 hours a week. Every time we have a concert or special event there goes any "free time". The spring is definitely the worst. And just looking at the calendar May is the most ridiculous month. Between April 30 and May 25 the only non-work day is the 12th. Ouch. Although I do plan on taking a few other days off. Now if I could just get someone to do my job when I'm not in the office things would be rather more dandy.

So it whatever time is left to me I have all of the following things to do:

• House work: The cat is not pulling his weight around the house and I have to do it all. The little jerk.
• Yard work:  I think I had to start mowing a full month earlier with the weather so warm. And I've expanded my veggie garden. Here's hoping I keep more than just cucumbers alive this time.
• Friends: After years of being largely, but not entirely, anti-social it seems that I've recently managed to re-connect much more with some old friends. And I've even found new ones - whoa.
• Band: The music is kinda bad all too often, but I could never give up playing so i'm glad for the outlet.
• Video games: Bran got me hooked on World of Warcraft and now he's dragging me into Diablo as well. I try not to admit it but they can be fun. I just wish they took less time and or I could knit and play!
• Biking: Exercise is healthy and can even be fun, I should do more of it.
• Photography: My photos really are getting better I think. But as with all learning/improvement more time is always a sure way to better results.
• Reading: I really don't know how I did it but as a youth I would fly through books sometimes to the tune of multiple books in a week. I've been doing a bit more lately but sometimes it feels like I'm just slogging through them. And the library deadlines come up so quickly!
• Knitting/Crochet: Aside from the perpetual desire to be working on dozens of projects of my own I even have the opportunity right now to work on growing a bit of my own crafty business. Maybe I should learn lever knitting or whatever the supposed current fastest knitting method may be.
• Spinning: I am totally getting better at spinning. Latest discover is an awesome DKish single. Knit up so wonderfully.
• Other Crafts: My awesome sewing machine is practically begging me to use it more often. And wouldn't it be wonderful to work at sketching/doodling/zentangling. Oh and what about the sweatshirt that I've wanted to paint for myself for over a year.
• Relax: Eh, overrated!

Box of Happiness

Yesterday I posted a very long-winded post about using a $50 Knitpicks gift card. Well that post took me a while to write. Long enough in fact that I placed the order last Friday, the 20th, and well my package was delivered on Wednesday the 25th! Ok, so I suppose its not just that my blog writing and posting is slow but also that Knitpicks is super fast - hooray for that.

Here is my box off happiness:

Thanks to the holiday generosity of my Aunt and Uncle it cost me $1.13. That rocks. The split ring stitch markers there were a $2 addition that got me the free shipping. And really one can never have enough stitch markers, right?

This book and skeins are destined to be Christmas presents for next year. I am all kinds of ahead of schedule...it's pretty doubtful that the trend will continue. I spent a bit of time paging through the book and read most of the intro. I am way more excited than I even realized I would be. The history that Nancy Bush includes has just completely drawn me in and makes me so much more excited for the patterns and techniques. And now I'm even second guessing my original pattern choice. There is a good possibility that I'll choose two different patterns. But then I would have to decide who gets what and well how on earth could I manage to decide? Maybe I'll gift them but say they should share :-)

And well the yarn of course. Oh my is this wonderful yarn. It was hard to capture the colors, but then even in real life colors will change depending on the light. In person they are much darker but still have a beautiful sheen. The alpaca is super amazing soft and lends a very light halo. And holy moly is the stuff thin. I thought that my cone from colourmart was particularly thin, but this Alpaca Cloud is only maybe a hair thicker. It's hard to believe that I'll be able to knit up a whole scarf from skeins that really are quite petite. But that's the magic of lightweight yarn and lace patterns I suppose. I suspect that the hardest part of working with these yarns is going to be not plastering these projects all over the place and spoiling the surprise for my giftees.

Lastly we have my wonderful happy-inducing splurge on self yarn. Yup, it's colorful. But I knew that, what most took me by surprise was how amazing soft this yarn is. I think during the ordering process I was do distracted obsessing about which color(s) to choose that I lost sight of fiber content. Luckily early on in the process I had narrowed in on the 25% alpaca in the Imagination sock yarn. It is soft and squishy and colorful and as such quite wonderful. I immediately (well after the photo-shoot and eating dinner) had to wind one of the skeins into a ball and start working up a little swatch. As I suspected the project is going to be quite super saturated. And the stretches of color are all shorter than might be my ideal, but I am still going to love this project.


And rather off topic, but many many thanks to all who commented and encouraged me last week. On a wave of enthusiasm from your input one of my goals this week is to finish processing the rest of the fiber to prepare for the marled yarn with Max fiber.

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Thanks for visiting! Be sure and check out the rest of the Fiber Arts Friday blogs.

What to get

For Christmas my Aunt and Uncle gave me a $50 Gift Certificate to Knitpicks. It turns out that my Aunt asked my Mother what I wanted. And Mother, having found and read by blog had seen the wishlist I posted about when I was plugging the Knitpicks contest. But anyways it is totally like an amazing awesome gift and I have been thinking about it since the evening I received the code in my inbox.

My first solid plan was to buy the yarn to knit up these amazing Penguin Socks. These suckers are actually what first drew me to knitpicks. It was a few years ago and for some reason my parents had received a knitpicks catalog in the mail. I think it had these super cute guys on the cover, or maybe they just decided to keep it and give it to me when I came home/visited. They had a whole little kit you could buy of the yarns needed for the project if memory serves. I drooled over everything but at the time sock knitting still seemed way out of my league, plus I'm totally cheap. So I just tucked it away in my memory. And at some point along the line when I was on ravelry I found it and added it to my (large) project queue to make sure I would remember it. This winter I actually came *this* close to offering these socks as a gift to my friends, but the weird IOU-ness of having custom socks when I didn't know the recipient (we were doing a Pollyanna) made me decide against the idea in the end. However before it was rejected I had already purchased the book. So now all I needed was the yarn. I spent a good bit of time debating over which yarn/colors to choose. Palette had more colors available but I liked that the Stroll Sock Yarn was super-wash and so I added the yarns to my online shopping cart.

In browsing I had completely fallen in love with pretty much all of the luxury yarns Knitpicks carries: Alpaca, Angora, Cashmere, no matter the flavor if it sounds soft I will drool over it. I wasn't quite sure what to make however. But then I feel in love with a beautiful delicate lace pattern on ravelry that I thought would be perfect for my Mother and or Aunt. Now over the holiday's I learned that they've both read the blog so I don't want to spoil the surprise but I found a perfect lace alpaca blend that seemed just divine. Plus I was being super good and thinking about and planning to start my Christmas knitting super early.

Knitpicks has free shipping at $50 so, of course, I must hit something just above that value. My cart needed more stuff.

After seeing it on someone else's blog I had absolutely fallen in love with the Peerie Flooers Hat. And having somewhat recently become comfortable (and dare I say good) at stranded knitting I thought it would be a super fun project. Plus I had some left over palette finger colors from the tiny Christmas ornament knitting I had been doing. So I set about choosing the other colors I needed for the project. But in doing so I was perusing all of the other projects on Ravelry and completely fell in love with the idea of using a different color palate. So I went about drooling over all of those possibilities and spent lots of time excruciating (did you know that excrutiated is not a word? well at least not one I can manage to spell. weird) over finding the perfect colors. As much as I love online shopping this is where it really let me down. There was really no way to know how perfectly the colors would work together firstly because my monitor could be showing something different and then secondly because it's yarn and the dye lot could be different.

In the midst of all that color planning I realized that since the pattern I needed for the lace alpaca scarves was from a book, Knitted Lace of Estonia, so well maybe I could use a Barnes & Noble gift certificate (also a gift) to purchase that. They had the book but before I ordered I realized that so did Knitpicks! Plus the Knitpicks version included a DVD and was a few dollars cheaper.

Well adding that to my shopping cart just messed up my whole plan entirely. After much deliberation I realized that I just wasn't nearly so enthralled with knitting the Penguin socks as I had once been. Many other projects seemed more appealing. So out of the cart they came.

And then to really shake things up instead of Peerie Flooers I had the brilliant (crazy) idea to make a different hat from the same designer. Originally made from all different shades of sheep I could blend up my own shades of alpaca! And possibly even come up with my own alpaca charts. Crazy, but awesome. And it requires no more purchasing. Out of the cart came all of the yarns for the hat.

Now I was left with another $20 burning a hole in my pocket. So I ended up thinking about more of my linen stitch scarves. On numerous occasions I had contemplated how some of their sock yarns would look knit up in one of those marvelously colored scarves. But I was already planning two spinning project ideas to be knit up in the same pattern so it seemed like over kill.

But the more I thought about it the more I convinced myself that it was ok. This was my Christmas Present after all. Why not go ahead and splurge (ok ignore the fact that all of this is splurging really) and just do whatever I want. After a good bit more excruciating over color options I settled upon the crazy wild and bright Over the Rainbow which was in a luscious sounding 50% Merino Wool 25% Superfine Alpaca, 25% Nylon blend. The colors are super wild and I'm worried that the whole scarf will just be too super saturated and not look that great. But then when its cold and I'm bundling up in a scarf I really will need something bright and festive to warm me inside and out. So it'll be good.


All very very good.

Marled Yarn

All four colors after some prep (flicking).

Way back in September I purchased a pile of raw dyed alpaca from Alpacas of York at Knitters Day Out. I purchased without intention just because I loved the colors, and the price was good. But I really like to have fiber/yarn with intention so I quickly, I think I was still at KDO, came up with the perfect idea for the fiber.

The doomed swatch. I had already started frogging when I
remembered to take a picture.

I wanted to spin it up so that each of the 4 colors was still distinct but knit it up into a linen stitch scarf where all of the colors would blend together (like the Koigu Linen Stitch Scarves on Ravelry). I even went so far as to spin and knit up a swatch. Two swatches actually as sometime late fall or early winter I made some adjustments and spin and half knit myself up a second swatch.

Now coming off of the holiday maddness I am thinking about the project again. So I, finally, finished swatch #2. I was happy with it and weighed it to see approximately what gauge I was getting vs. the amount of fiber. DOOM. My not terribly large swatch was nearly half an ounce and I only have around 5 ounces of fiber. The maths would not work.

So I spent a few days rather sadly contemplating the state of things and unsure of quite what to do. And then at some point it came to me....a while back I remembered reading an article about creating marled yarns as a way to stretch dyed roving on the knitty blog. Perfect!

Now in the blog she talks a good bit about which color to choose. Being as I don't have that much of a fiber stash I just went with my good ol' Max fiber which is virtually never-ending around here. Plus the chocolate brown worked well with the rich muted colors.

Marled Yarn, pre-wash.

Unwilling to sacrifice any more of the fiber to swatching I rather crazily managed to un-spin the last swatch back into a single. I then re-spun the single to make sure the twist was still ok. This resulted in some rather funky yarn but for testing purposes I decided that was acceptable. Once I had enough Max spun up I plied the two together.

Almost all of my crafting these days is done at night while it is dark out by the lamps of my living room. In that relatively poor light I was rather worried about the yarn. Everything just seemed overly dark and muddied together, except of course the yellow which was high contrast. But I finished up the sample washed it and hung it to dry over night. [I've taken to hanging/laying things out over the top of the furnace in the basement, best drying method ever.]

The next morning I found that I was much happier with the yarn in the daylight. I had to be out of the office over lunch to sell tickets and whenever those days come I like to take a good craft project. My swatch was perfect for this. So over the next two days I knit up the new swatch in between selling tickets and answering questions.

Swatch - take 3.

I really am surprised how much I love the next fabric. The way the colors pop on the solid brown background just seems like such fun. Although I'm a bit worried that some of the colors, especially the green, fade into the brown a bit too much.

Now, as I finish prepping the rest of the fiber, I'm a bit on the fence. I could run with the "Max Brown" color for the entire scarf. I'm pretty sure I would love it. But I could also try spinning up some of the Fawn fleece that I have (Lance), rip out, un-spin (again), and re-spin with the alternate color. It's a tricky choice...

I'll probably go ahead and continue the ridiculousness and try me some Lance sampling just to be sure. Boy am I crazy sometimes....

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Thanks for visiting! Be sure and check out the rest of the Fiber Arts Friday blogs.

Knit Picks Wishlist

A few weeks back I ordered from Knitpicks for the first time. I figured since it was a place of fibery goodness I would enjoy window shopping and allowed them to add me to their email list. Scanning it quickly while in the midst of something I noticed it said I could win something! But having no time I just left it in my inbox.

Yesterday I finally managed to revisit the email and discovered the following contest:

As posted on their website you add stuff to your wishlist, which requires signing up for a username, then email the list to someone. Once you do this they must somehow know about it and will select 3 winners on Friday who will each receive $50 to spend on things from their list.

Now being all about window shopping this was no problem at all.

My first introducing to knitpicks was a catalog that my parents had somehow received. But they passed it along to me and I absolutely fell in love with the most amazing penguin socks. Seriously how cute are these guys? I knew the pattern was in a book so I tried looking for it, which of course involved pulling up Ravelry to find exact sock pattern and book. And then utter disappointment when it seems that knitpicks no longer carries this book. Luckily there were more categories to explore.

I started with the needles and accessories as yarn is harder to select online I think, its much nicer to feel it. I already have the knitpicks interchangeables which I use all the time. They're great. But it would be nice to have a longer cord for magic looping larger items. Plus I actually may have broken one of my cables. I was pulling it out of a swatch and the metal bit that has the screw part pulled most of the way off of the plastic cable. It was very sad. Then of course they didn't have much of those things but lots of other good stuff. How awesome would it be to have a real swift in place of my foam core arms with paperclip hooks kinda taped to a lazy-susan. Or lace blocking wires to actually block things with decent straight edges. Or whoa, a pretty needle case.

The $$$ amount of the wishlist went up pretty darn quick.

Then I figured I'd at least take a look at the yarns even though I couldn't vouch for their softness. The first thing to catch my eye was the absolutely beautiful line of Chroma yarn. I have a somewhat random love for all things gradient so these were right up my alley. The choices range from beautiful fall colors to a bold sunset to a bright rainbow. Love it. A bunch of those went on the list even though I have no idea what I would ever make with the yarn. And well I may or may not have accidentally purchased an awesome bright rainbow graduated yarn from A C Moore on Saturday....buuut moving on.

The next, and final, thing(s) I fell for were the bulky yarns and the soft sounding yarns. Having just had such fast sucess with the super bulk yarn used for the crochet scarf it seemed like it would be lots of fun to make many more such quick gratification projects. And then I am always a sucker for soft, particularly Alpaca and Angora so Alpaca Cloud Lace, Capra Cashmere, and Sugarbunny Yarns all found themselves on the list.

Here's my list. I just need to win the lottery so I can buy it all with or without any contest winning. Now go and make your own list so maybe we'll both be lucky winners!

Fiber Arts Friday: Not so much progress

So after pretty much kicking butt last week at the whole getting stuffs done this week was not so good.

I had every intention and didn't think it would be at all difficult to finish up the Max sweater. I mean all that was left was the band! Alas life had other ideas in mind. Friday night was cleaning and seeing Bran, Saturday was a rushed last big of cleaning then the Renaissance Fair. Sunday and Monday were spending all day with my Aunt & Uncle working on the house (or all too often watching him work and wishing I could help). There was indeed some knitting in there, but it was sadly minimal. Tuesday was the only decent free day and it did indeed have much knitting. In fact on Tuesday I crafted all of the strength right out of my hands. That was new. Wednesday was a bit of time but then Band and seeing Bran's new apartment. And Thursday was dinner with Bran's family and more new apartmentness.

Holy smokes how is a girl supposed to get anything done around here?

The Max sweater is however amazingly enticingly close to finished. Its a bit tricky because I have to take all of the stitches (300ish) off of the needle and onto waste yarn to try the sucker on to check on the band size. I have in my head that I must must must finish and block this weekend. I can not wait to wear this sucker.

I did also get in some reasonably decent spinning time. I have probably 2-3 ounces completely prepped all the way into roving form (yay hackle) which I've found easiest to work from. 1.4 of it is all spun up and waiting on a TP roll for plying. Most of that is just one nights work (Tuesday) so I fully expect that I ought to have a plying mate all spun up for it this weekend. I could theoretically ply but I think I'll let it rest a bit first. Plus I'm going to aim to get another few ounces of washed locks flicked and drawn into roving.

Lastly on the fiber front this week I started a new project. Not exactly the most brilliant way to get all of the other stuff done but so it goes. But it's for the Scarves for Special Olympics project. And it so happened that the yarn was on sale in Michaels when Bran drug me there. I'm just doing a simple double crochet pattern with holes in the shape of a heart. It's great because it takes approximately no focus and can be picked up/put down at any time. I actually started it at the Ren Faire and it worked quite well anytime we were sitting and waiting for a show to start. It is super happy news that this year they gave us colors that can be had in "Red Heart Soft". Previously it was all regular Red Heart Super Saver yarn which is rather dreadful (but cheap). The soft is quite akin to my super favorite cheap yet soft yarn: Simply soft. Hooray for that.

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you'll come back and read about more of my goings-on. 

Be sure and check out WISDOM BEGINS IN WONDER! to see more Fiber Arts Friday Blog Amazingness.

Fiber Arts Friday: The Things I'm Doing

I wanted to try for the first time to participate in Fiber Art's Friday's. And I thought it would be a great opportunity to introduce all of my current Fiber Works in Progress. Well to be more specific it's all of my current WIP's that I am actively, or well generally mostly-sorta-kinda, working on:

Max Sweater:

It was my epic (for me) goal during this years Tour de France/Fleece to spin up enough yarn for a Featherweight Sweater and I was totally successful. I cast on back mid/late August. And the project has ebbed and flowed but last week I finished the body and got this huge surge of must-finish-this-project-ness going on. Last night I cast off the 2nd sleeve and picked up 2/3 of the stitches for the band! I ought to be able to finish before next week. Woohoo! 

And I really am loving it all. Being knit top down I've been trying it on since it was time to split off the sleeves. The thing really fits me like a glove. I had it out last night at band and one of my fellow flute members (a casual knitter I think) commented it looked child size. I commented back that it was fitted and had she noticed that I pretty much am child sized. It amused me. I could say more about this project but I think I'll leave it for a full report once it's finished.

Argyle Alpaca Mittens:

Sudden thought: I really ought to call these the Argyle Alpaca Appendage warmers. I really have a thing for alteration. Anyone know of an A word for warmers?

This is the other bit of yarn that was spun up during the TDF. Purchased from Dunn Spun Alpaca's at 2010's Knitters Day Out the stuff is absolutely so amazingly soft and pretty much the best thing ever. It practically spun itself. The knitting of these gloves however is a bit more of a challenge. 

Color work is probably one of my lowest knitting skillz levels. Really I've just not done that much of it at all. So I'm doing my darndest to keep the stranding tension even and not too tight. It's also difficult because I really don't do all that much knitting on double pointed needles. I prefer to magic loop. So holding everything even and keeping the stitches has become part of the challenge (or fun when I'm being postive).

We have however had a crazy cold snap here in South Central PA (actually it's become phenomenally nice again, but last weekend was miserable). And the weather makes me quite anxious to get working on these mittens to keep my hands nice and toasty warm.

Ellie & Rosie Spinning:

On Ravelry some people have been offering "Spin a bag get bag". The idea being they are likely the owners of some fiber bearing animals who have more fleece than they can keep up with. So they send a willing spinner, like me, fiber. We spin it up and return half of it back.

I was lucky enough to make such an arrangement with Tracey of Koehlers 4 Star Alpacas. She sent me 2 bags, 1 lb each, of fiber. Ellie is white and Rosie is rose grey. I absolutely love love love each of the colors.

Alas I must have been crazy when I contacted her about this because seriously I have so many other things that I am working on and so much fiber to spin already. But whenever I'm doing something for anyone else I really do try to bump it up near to the top of the WiP priority list.

I've been carefully sorting and washing the fleece so far. Previously I've just spun all of my raw alpaca dirty. However I recently got up the courage to try washing raw fiber and I absolutely love it. It is certainly not the most speedy process as I am being extra crazy and keep everything in lock formation but I like it this way. The only problem so far is that some of the fiber isn't exactly ideal. I've found a some second cuts, but also patches of corse locks and some just generally quite short bits. I'm not quite sure what to do about it all as I really wanted to return a full pound to Tracy, but I also don't want to stick myself with all of the yucky bits.

So far I've washed prepped and spun up little test samples of each. I had a very easy time spinning Ellie right from the flicked locks but I also tried and was fairly successful and creating a long roving strip using my hackle. After finishing washing about 8 ounces of Ellie I started to spin last night. I seemed to be much more consistent using the roving strip so I think I'll probably prep the rest in that fashion.

Rosie, having all different colors and shades in her fleece offered much more in the way of possibilities. Unfortunately her fleece is also the prime culprit of short pieces. After deciding I wanted to blend her colors I tried the hackle but it wasn't very successful, I suspect the blame could be the short bits. Luckily using hand carders the blending worked rather well.

The plan for this next week is to get the 8 oz of Ellie prepped into roving and keep spinning then get 8oz of Rosie washed.

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Thanks for visiting and I hope you'll come back and read about more of my goings-on. Be sure and check out WISDOM BEGINS IN WONDER! to see more Fiber Arts Friday Blog Amazingness!

Inspiration

I have been inspired to blog again. Wish me luck.

Other than that I really do have what feels like a half a million inspirations swirling around in my head. Here are some of the more concrete ideas:

Dragon Mittens:

I purchased these delightfully fun bits of roving from the MD Sheep and Wool Fest way back in May. I knew I wanted to spin up as a variegated color changing yarn, but I wasn't sure what project. Then I found these absolutely amazing Dragon Mittens. Love it. 

Although I am a bit on the fence if I should knit the mittens with the whole rainbow or just use half more similar to the original design.

All in all this will be an epic project/challenge when (not if) I actually do it.

Kiwi:

After reading an article in the local paper about a nearby sheep farm I started following the farm on facebook. Sure enough when they posted that they had just sheared the sheep and were selling the fleeces I had to take a visit. I came home with the fleece of this delightful little sheep named Kiwi. The fleece is multiple colors of brown and grey. But I couldn't resist working up a little sample. I wanted to take advantage of the multiple colors to knit up a scarf like this one using the linen stitch. And interesting in the end the project came out very grey and not much brown at all. But still beautiful. I can't wait to make the whole thing.

Alpaca's of York:

At Knitters Day Out this year I was delighted to find the Alpaca's of York booth. She had these delightful piles of raw, but dyed, alpaca. With the help of my knitting friend I picked out these four colors with the idea of making some fall-ish type of something.

Also while out browsing all of the amazing booths I had noticed, and fallen in love with, these amazing multi-colored scarves that looked woven. Later I realized that they were actually knit using the linen stitch. I've decided to put two and two together and make myself, another, awesome scarf. Again, I couldn't resist working up a sample, pictured above. For the final project I think I'll just work each row with only one color so that they are constantly mixing, like these examples, or as they do where the colors meet in my sample. I'm also thinking about blending some of the fiber colors together.

Yikes I've already nearly written another novel chapter, so I'll stop there. Inevitably there are definately more project ideas swirling around in my head. But at least one of these three is likely to be the next thing started on the needles (or spindle as it were).

Knitting lace.

Way back in July when I started planning Christmas gifts I decided that I wanted to spin enough lace weight alpaca to make my Mother a big scarf/shawl. It seemed like a pretty crazy goal, but at the time I was quite gung-ho on the spinning thing and for some reason seemed to think that the knitting part was practically a throw away.

The month past, and while I did accomplish a good bit of spinning, I didn't meet my goal. So when October came near everything was a bit iffy, but I decided to proceed with Mother's scarf/shawl reducing the repeats in efforts to still have enough remaining yarn to make a scarf for Bran's sister.

Then I proceeded to struggle with the 3rd row of the pattern. It took much longer than it should but after a while i figured it out, and i was off.

I've not done much lace knitting at all so it was something different. The project certainly didn't look like much while on the needles. But I found that when I stretched it out things were shaping up rather awesomely.

Unfortunately awesome or not things seemed to be crawling along at a snails pace. But then after about two weeks of plodding along suddenly I found my groove with the pattern and I started going more quickly. I also started to realize just how much size was added when the knitting was stretched. It was awesome.

And so late last Friday I found myself at a point where I could cast off! The next day (after a traumatic laundromat visit) I made my own blocking board. and on Sunday I stretched the whole thing out 20" by 60" and let the sucker dry. 

Inevitably there are a good many inconsistencies in the project. There are a few spots where you can see that I used a batch of coarser, not quite the same color, fleece. Really I need to get over it and just throw that stuff out next time (I hate waste!). At the end of my first skein I seemed to have gotten particularly fine with my spinning, then the next skein started off a bit more bulky. And lastly I'm not sure if I was just knitting more loosly or if the yarn changed, both are quite possible, but the start of the scarf is much tighter than it was when I casted off. Blocking helped this last issue some, but really the end didn't take nearly as much stretching, so who knows....

Plus I am quite worried that as Mother uses it the crazy hand-made item could easily loose shape. I was reading knitting horror stories about such things with alpaca yarn....that would be sad.

But for now at least I can enjoy marveling at this simple beauty.

April Recap.

So it feels rather like April pretty much kicked my butt. I really don't know what happened....

Home time: I went back to my parents house first for Easter and then later to visit my Grandfather (he's on hospice now).  As much as I like going back to see my family and enjoy spending time with them it always feels like I accomplish nothing from those days. That said I wouldn't trade them back just to get things done. Umm...yea I don't think there is a way to properly express this. Oh well.

Boy time: Bran and I spent a lot of my free hours together. This is also 100% a good thing as our relationship is just getting stronger and stronger and more and more awesome. But seriously he doesn't even let me knit when we're watching movies or TV. No worries though someday I'll overrule him :-)

Crafts: Towards the beginning of the month I do believe I was thinking spinning. I made that little batch of yarn. But then I was distracted by other things. On the square front I only managed to whip up 3 crochet and 1 knit square. With everything going on I've just not had my normal free time. Goodness.

Reading: The Shadow Rising, this months WoT book was just shy of 1000 pages. I hit the middle of the month and realized I was only like 1/3 of the way through. But in this last week I dug down deep and finished it last evening before midnight even :-)

Biking: I do believe that I hit just over 100 miles in April. Better than March, but less good than it should be. Must improve in May.

Video Games: Bran has me addicted to games now dammit. I bet I lost a oodles and oodles of time to the DS. Plus he was trying to get me into a new game. And now in the last few days I am getting into the new game. Uh-oh.

So all in all, aside from work and my regularly scheduled events, ballet and band, I do believe those things can account for pretty much my entire month....hmm...that seems kinda pathetic.

Special Olympic Scarves Wrap-Up

"Way" back in February I was working furiously on my "star" scarf for the special olympics. I'm proud to report that I completed both that scarf and then I used the remaining yarn to whip up a quick crochet scarf as well.

My local knitting group collectively made around 7 or 8 scarves I think.

From what I can see online the even went off quite well and they easily recieved more than enough scarves. Hooray!

March Progress

March definitely came in like a Lion for me. And while it's calmed down some, I really don't see many lambs in my future.

The stress is entirely work related. This is always the busiest time of the year and there were a few compounding issues thrown into the works this time around. And so I’ve been feeling pretty stretched since late-February-ish. Then pretty much from right around when March started it’s been like running full throttle into a brick wall. Over, and over, and over again. Can you tell from all of my amazing metaphors (and I could easily think of dozens more) that things really are not very happy for me there? Yes? Good.

Thank goodness that my personal life is actually for real happy, or I would be completely doomed. Reason #1 for this is the continued awesomeness that is my Man. We hit six months on the 11th. Yay for us. I’ve also been happily crafting, reading, managing to ride my bike at least a bit, and I’m a bit loath to say where the Man can see it but I’ve even been video-gaming it some as of late. These things make me happy. Although even some of the happy things have been a bit stifled owing to exhaustion and what not. Boo.

But let’s take a closer look at my specific March goals:

• WoT Reading: An easy easy check. I finished book 2 early in the month and as I only have 170ish pages left in book 3 I may actually be back on track with my book a month plan.
• Bike 100 miles: Uh-oh. Right now I’ve only logged 35 miles. And I have absolutely no excuse as the weather has been incredibly gorgeous. It’s just so hard to get motivated when I can collapse on the couch and read or do a craft. Or if I want to enjoy the weather I can go read outside. Technically I still have 10 days which is quite enough for lots of miles. But I don’t see it happening. Maybe I should modify and try for 50?
• Blocks of the month: Double-ish check. I finished the planned 4 squares. Then at some point I calculated how large the afghans would be and decided I ought to be doing 3 of each (6 total) blocks each month. Last night I started to question that so who knows what I’ll really do. But so far this month I have completed 2 crochet squares and 3 knit squares plus have 1 crochet block started.
• Art Journal: I started 1 page and didn’t finish anything. New things are totally not my strong point. Must kick self into action.
• Wall-decal: 2 weekends ago when I was actually not working I found that I can easily freehand a dandelion seed. I was very proud of myself and promptly cut and ‘hung’ one lonely seed which floated their alone for a time. Then yesterday I was re-inspired and drew up a bunch, cut out 4 and proceeded to attempt the stem. It’s much too big and heavy now, but it’s still good progress and quite awesome.
• Blog comments: So far I’m slacking. It just feels so weird. And is exasperated by my own lack of bloggage recently. But I should be able to do it now that I am posting again.
• Postcards: I was going to do something for St. Patty’s day. And even started/tried something new. But the new thing wasn’t so cool and I never kept going. But if I do something relatively simple, maybe design something printable, the goal could still be easily met.
• Organize craft stuff: Check! I did this 2 weekends ago. It was awesome. I took many pictures with the intent of blogging about it.
• Cook: Kinda doing ok at this maybe? Early in the month I made Chicken and Biscuits which is kind of cheating because everything, the meat veggies and starch, are all in the one dish. Last week I had two good dinners of ham steak and pierogies with peppers. The peppers thing was an unknown but it worked out happily.

Well I do still have some work to do. But seems like I stand a chance at being moderately successful. Rock on!

March Goals

Goal setting has never been one of my strong points. If it's something I can do right away I'm perfectly good at that. Frequently when I have free weekends I'll make giant task lists and typically do pretty well at accomplishing them. But the farther I get from the goal-set date the less likely it is that I will complete the task.

But I'm feeling motivated today. This is partially owing to the fact that I have totally been banging out craft projects recently. So I'm going to try for some March goals. And I'll try hard not to be too overly ambitious.

• Finish reading WoT book 2. I should have been able to accomplish this in February but the olympics distracted me. Now I'm going to have to work a bit to make it back up to getting through a book a month.
• Ride 100 miles on bike. This is pretty ambitious and will be entirely weather based. Right now the sun sets around 6 and we only occastionally make it into the 40's. But I'm hoping that by the end of the month I'll be able to push out a few 1 or 2 hour rides with temps in the 40's and if i'm really lucky 50's. Fingers crossed.
• 4 squares. 2 crochet, 2 knit for my 'block a month' afghans. I really ought to like space these suckers out over the month to keep my yarn-crafting itch satiated while working on other things through the month.
• Make at least 4 art journal pages. Maybe even get watercolors to play with.
• Dandelion wall-decal for bedroom. I have wanted to do this for a long time.
• Leave at least 10 blog comments for others. I am a total lurker, but must break out of this habit.
• Send another batch of postcards to friends and family.
• Organize all craft stuff. I have so much stuff and a good bit of it is randomly stored. Organization (or as close as can be) will be awesome.
• Make at least 2 real home-cooked meals (meat, veggies, and starch) from scratch. I've been failing on the feeding-self-well thing recently. But I don't want to do more than 2 because frequently such things feed me for a full week.

 

It would be way to easy to keep thinking of more things but I really must contain myself. It's a good list. A few things may be a challenge (biking), but with some persistence and drive ought to be do-able.

I'm thinking I ought to do weekly reports. Breaking things down into smaller pieces is always helpful to success.

Beautiful

Back in January a co-worker and I attended the state farm show. It's right down the road from the office and going with someone who will actually sit and watch the whole sheep-to-shawl contest with me was awesome. My co-worker had gone before both in previous years and previously that week and had taken notice of some Alpaca yarn.

Now she is quite familiar with my spinning and knitting stories as I have been known to more-or-less have office show and tell days :-) So she wanted to know if I'd be able to make her a scarf from the skein of alpaca yarn (the stuff was expensive $28!). At 200 yards it was close but I figured I ought to be able to do it using a lacy pattern and some larger needles.

Sure enough about two weeks later I presented to her the finished scarf. It's a bit on the short side but makes up for it by being stretchy, thick, warm, and o-so-soft.

Just last week she put together an outfit with the scarf. Being a quite stylish lady I was absolutely in love with what she wore. It was a white cabled sweater with a deep purple pencil skirt. The scarf was around her heck and fixed together with a broach. the colors all worked together perfectly and it was stunning.

I'm quite sure that I'm biased having knit the scarf. But it was just the most awesome feeling to see her and be able to say "I made that!".

I glossed over this project in my weekend recap but here's the (relatively long winded) details:

Monday a week ago,  2/15, I go to my knitting meetup group and find that I've accidentally missed the band-wagon on participating in the knitting of scarves for the Special Olympics. Three other ladies had their yarn and were already going. I had just been to the salvation army for my rag-rug material supplies, to Michaels to stock up on yarn for the Squares of the Month, and I was in the midst of the tricky Penguin hat. But I figured that on that Thursday, 2/18, I would need to go to the laundromat and I could stop by ACMoore for the specific yarn needed for the scarf. I, of course, had a coupon and they ended up having an awesome lilac scented candle for a good price. Irrelevant but awesome.

Unfortunately the scarves need to arrive at their destination by March 9th. The group mentioned mailing them together but I'm still not sure what exactly deadline they'll be following. I figure that I'll be finishing up this weekend and can mail it myself if needed. so I need to finish by our next meeting which is on Tuesday, 3/2. This is not much time.

So of course I picked this awesome double knitting pattern, which means that my one scarf awesome looking scarf is really 2 less awesome scarfs together. Not the most economical decision but I really enjoy the cause which the scar will be going to. And just envisioning the joy that it will hopefully bring to someone. And the fact that it will hopefully become a treasured bit of memorabilia and or inspiration, well that makes the current scramble to knit quickly worth it.

As of today I think I have 25-30 inches. It needs to be 55 so I'm only about half way. At first glance that's a bit dis-heartening. But let's do some math...

7 days since I purchased the yarn + 2 non-knitting days (skiing/movie watching) + 2 half-non-knitting days (boyfriend distracting me/working late then band) = 4 days of knitting so far.

6 days til the meetup + 2 free evenings + 2 concert days where I'm so burnt out that I really never bother listening to the concerts anyways = Plenty of time!

Weekend crafting.

A good bit of my weekend time was lost (in large part owing to the fact that my man wouldn't let me knit during the LOTR marathon) but luckily I was able to spend most of Sunday with my various crafts.

The knitting was a necessity. My local knitting meet-up decided to participate in the knitting of scarves for the Special Olympics and the deadline is pretty tight. I only just got my yarn on Thursday and me being me, unlike most of the rest of my group, I didn't pick a particularly quick pattern. But I figure if I bang out at least 5 inches each day I'll be good. And given my status as "glued to the TV because she's addicted to the olympics" I may even best my 5 inches each day.

I added 4 rows to my kitchen rug. Before it seemed big in my lap and not so big in the kitchen. It takes approximately forever to get a whole row done, but it's easy work. So now I work on it on the floor while sitting on it, it's big, and it doesn't even look half bad in the kitchen. Yay.

And speaking of craft projects from recycled materials (the rug is from old sheets) I have my eye on another recycled materials project. Stay tuned for that.

It was my intent to add at least another page to my art journal but after painting backgrounds on 2 pages I didn't find quite the inspiration I was looking for to keep going. Although I totally just had an idea for what I should do. (Note to self: simple paint chip mosaic) Backgrounds are totally useful however as now I won't have to wait for paint to dry! Plus having just had that idea I'm good to go whenever I find the time and inspiration again. Also earlier today I totally had the idea of what I would like to put on the cover of the journal. (note to self: favorite quote plus feathers, figure out how to secure feather nicely)

But most excitingly of the weekend I 'finished' (really I could easily add more but it's not necessary) a project that I started in October or November and managed to ignore despite the fact that it is prominently displayed in my apartment. Brilliant. However I'm ridiculously long-winded so this is already long. I think that I shall describe this project as its very own post.

Making it up as I go.

As a card carrying member of the Secret Society of Penguins (ok, so I actually lost my cards years ago, but I think the fact that we did make them and for a time I had them justifies being able to say that) I have a bit of an obsession with all things Penguinal. This of course includes knitting.

Sitting in my ravelry queue for quite some time was this penguin hat. It's just been sitting there for a few reasons:
1. The pattern is for a small child. I may be small but I am at least bigger than a five year old.
2. It's knit flat and then sewed up in hat shape. I hate that.
3. I don't know how/have never before knit with multiple colors like that.

But on Sunday during my marathon olympics watching I ignored common sense and went for it.

Process:
To start I opened up excel and colored the cells to map out a new color chart that was twice as large as the original. Then I looked at an old hat project that I knitted and considered/compaired to established how many stitches I should cast on. I didn't want to double the original as I figured that would be too large. In the end I choose 100 because well it's nice and easy to remember.

I cast on my orange (red heart super saver I think, basically the cheapst orange I could find was the logic) ribbing on my size 5 circulars but soon switched over to double pointeds where I worked it up a few rows. Then I switched to my black simply soft. I knit approximately half of the black stitches and started to consider how the heck to make the color switches work. A bit of internet research gave me an idea and off I went.

To pick up the white yarn I twisted it around the end of the black. Then leaving the black hanging I knit across all of the white stitches. When I reached the end of the white I left the yarn hanging and then turned the piece around to be looking at the inside. Then I transferred all of the just completed white stitches onto the working needle (after a bit of doing I switched back to the circulars which was a tight fit but easier to keep everything up on). So at this point I'm looking at the inside of the hat my row of white stitches is on the right side working needle with the working yarn farthest to the right which is the inside of the circular needle.

I picked back up the black and proceeded to purl across the already completed black stitches and then when I reached it purled a first row of black on top of the remaining orange stitches until I reached the white. I really ought to have taken pictures but at this point it the picture would show 1 full row of the black and white pattern plus a 2nd row on the inside half of the black. It's entirely possible you have to do it to get it.

From there I twisted the yarns and just continued to purl across the white (using white of course). Then again I turned to the other side of the work and transferred all of the white stitches onto the working needle then picked back up with the black going the other way.

Can you see the pattern there?

If (or more likely when) I make a second attempt at this I'll probably start right on the white which i think should eliminate what ends up being pretty much an extra half row of black. But that's mostly speculation.

When I got to the pattern portion I would just knit the extra black stitches as needed or leave off the appropriate white stitch to be knit up when I came back around with the black. Then I hit the orange beak. 3 colors - o my.

Actually the beak ended up not being a problem at all. Doing the white back and forth was essentially knitting as one would flat and so I used standard intarsia knitting to form the orange beak just carrying the white behind it.

By the time I got to the top of the white patch where just the beak is sticking up I was ridiculously confsed and it took me forever to figure out what to do next. Theoretically I needed to just do the same thing, but I hadn't really thought through what I was doing (I was just doing whatever worked) so in theory I could do it now and be less confused (famous last words).

At long last reaching the eyes I was impressed that I'd done so much but also quite sure that I am crazy. I just attatched on the white and carried it back and forth wherever I needed it. I don't recomend this as it didn't lay nearly so nice as I would like. Plus I went and messed up and made a few stitches that should have been white black. D'oh.

Now having 'tried on' the hat during the process I was pretty sure it was going to come out much larger than I wanted. So I set out with the goal of decreasing it down from 100 stitches to 8 as quickly as possible without being ridiculous. The first row of solid black I decreased ever 8 stitches. Next every 6 stitches, 5, 4, 3, 2 and then every stitch. By this point it was crazy late and so I don't think my counting was so good but I just went with whatever.


Voila Penguin Hat!