Knitting Content!

Those of you who know me may recognize the shape of this shawl.  It's my second Danish Tie Shawl.  The blue one is still beautiful, but I had some fantastic brown marled handspun that was calling to be a bulky shawl.

Believe it or not, this shawl took me 16 days to complete, including weaving in ends and blocking.  I think if I'd done the weaving in and blocking as soon as the knitting and border were done, it would have been more like 12 days. 

With one project off the needles, of course I have to put a few more on.

Here are a couple of 8" squares made for a friend's baby blanket that my knitting group is doing together. 

And I came across a skein of brown Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool that called to be a nice warm scarf for Jeff.  

And that's what's on  and off the needles right now!

Power Tool Friday

After getting a very nice ArtFire sale, I decided to go ahead and invest some cash in supplies to make plenty more drop spindles.  I found a good woodworking store online and discovered that to buy the dowels pre-cut to 12" would be about $1.10 each.  However, buying 36" dowels, a pack of 100 was $22.00.  That's right.  $0.22 each, then cut into three pieces means these dowels are now about 7 cents.

Seriously? 

It costs a dollar to make a single cut?

Well. . . .

Here's what I think of that!

Plus Power Tool



Plus sexy eye protection

Equals

$300 worth of dowels for $22.


Hooray for power tools!  Now to assemble a hundred or so drop spindles!

Saturday Morning Serenity.

Baby Blanket

My friend Kathy is pregnant, and due soon with a baby boy.  Our knitting group has decided to knit squares in "boyish" colors, and then assemble them into one blanket.

I offered to knit a square with a bottle on it.

I did the right kind of bottle, didn't I?

Oh, if it helps, her husband is Russian

Artfire!

On a lark, and because frankly Etsy wasn't doing much for me, I created an Artfire account.

I didn't do much with it, just had some drop spindles available.

Lo and behold I had a sale!  I think I'll get to more drop spindles now, and maybe a couple of batts.  The buyer seemed to want to be ale to direct people to me in the future.

Warning: Cuteness Ahead

My Sister-in-law, Amanda, is a fantastic photographer.

Seriously!  Go look at her Facebook Page!  (boy I hope she has some permissions open on her FB page.  If not you'll just have to trust me that she's a fantastic photographer!)

Anyway, me being the fiber artist I am, and she being the photography artist she is, he kindly bought me a pattern for a cute little giraffe hat for her to use as a prop in her photography.

It was a fun crochet, yellow cotton and cashmere accents.  The same cashmere as I'd made into a hat for my niece Ally.  The only part that wasn't fun was the finishing parts, and being all picky about actually having the horns and ears symmetrical. 

The ball of roving I used to prop it open makes it look a little wonky, but it does lay out evenly.

Mailing this off to her on Monday!  These may well end up in my Etsy shop, since the pattern did come with permission to sell.  Anyone interested?

WIP Saturday!

Had I posted WIP Wednesday, it would have looked just like last week, but with more done.  I'm on the last repeat of Citron, and ready to do the final ruffle.  It's been a nice, mindless knit, but frankly I'm tired of purling.  I think the 520 stitches that make up the final ruffle/ruche will be done in garter stitch instead of stockinette.  I don't think that slight texture difference will harm the appearance of the shawl, and in fact, it may be an interesting twist on it. 

What I have been working on, however, is this:
My friend Elizabeth offloaded some of her SABLE stash of spinning materials, and I'm paying it forward.

Take this for example

 

 Beautiful, isn't is?  But this color

 Frankly makes me look ill.  As gorgeous as it is. 

 So what to do, but spin it up,

Ply it

And pass it along!

I can't wait to give this to a friend :-D

Another installment of. . .

WIP Wednesday!

With the vest done, I wanted to have something a little less complicated to work on, and what's less complicated than good old Stockinette Stitch?

It's the Citron Shawl from Knitty, done in Malabrigo Lace.  It's so nice to work with.  Soft Smooth Merino wool. 



I'm also working on spinning up yarn for a friend.  Elizabeth brought in a ton of gorgeous roving, and handed the entire bag to me!  I was floored, and saw one that was specifically perfect for Diana, so am paying it forward!

Fabulous Friday!

I actually got the package on Wednesday, but wanted to wait to share the goodies with friends. . .

The box was full and heavy!

 

Cuppy Cakes and other stitch markers!

Beautiful Glass Beads!

 

Glass orifice hooks!

Some were immediately turned into gifts :-)

Plus wool, straws, and glass craft stuff!

This is what all those fabrics turned in to.  Many have already been or will be given as gifts, but either way, I'm ecstatic about this trade!

If you like the stitch markers, buttons, or orifice hooks, look up Glastonbury Glassworks!


The other fabulous thing was that my birthday yarn vest is completed!  In 42 days, to be precise.

It's lovely, and fits perfectly :-)

Slightly Late, but. . .

WIP Wednesday has been postponed because I am so very nearly done with my Celtic Lattice sweater.   I can almost taste it. . . and snorgle it. . .

I will also have a picture-laden post about how all of the fabrics that I got 5 years ago have been transformed into something WONDERFUL!

Cutting up perfectly good knitting

This week in WIP Wednesday!

Steeking

Scary but fun.  It goes like this:

You knit (and knit, and knit) planning ahead for things like arms and necks and torso openings. 

One yarn in each hand so that you end up with a beautiful tube like this.

In some places, instead of a pretty pattern you just knit with one after the other, making a sort of checkerboard pattern

Then you use your sewing machine and run stitching down either side of the center of that checkerboard.

And then. . .

You cut!!!!!

ahhhhhhhhh!!!

no, actually it's going really well

See how it's not unravelling?   If you look closely you can see black thread where I stitched down the steek. 

When done, you have knitting that looks like something vaguely resembling a vest that you can then pick up stitches around to finish the edges. 

More to come, as the edges are knit! 

Man, I need to clean my craft room.

New year, Better Blogger

New year, New Layout, New goals. 

Like the new layout?  Apparently in my bad blogging times Blogger came up with all sorts of new tools for making a blog look cool.

My goal is to blog at least once a week.  If nothing else than to keep up with knitting (and other) projects I'm working on.  I do like the slightly cliched WIP Wednesday, so let's start with that. 

The most awesome Jackie of Feathers for Pleasure has been cleanin out her Mom's attic, and keeps coming across spinning stuff.  She came by with a bag full of comercially prepped wool that I'm guessing is Corriedale.  So I dyed some of it in a gradient and made a Tappan Zee

It's about 99% done, all blocked and the ends woven in, I'm just searching for the perfect buttons.

I also finally finished Jeff's absolutely gorgeous hand processed hand spun sweater!

Man does it look good on him!

This is how I spent my past Sunday, with more of the commercially prepped corriedale, a cup of coffee and my favorite spinning wheel.

After our friend Phil had blinged it out!

I haven't yet decided what the brown wool will turn in to, but I will certainly have a lot of it.  I'm currently filling the 7th bobbin.  While Ashford bobbins aren't the biggest, at the thinness I'm spinning, there should be somewhere around 200 yards on each bobbin.  I'm planning on a 2-ply, so it should be a sweater's worth of yarn!

Ooh, maybe I'll ply it with the reddish roving I got from SAFF.  Stretch it just a little more, and have a gradiented yarn like I made the Tappan Zee out of. . . hmmmmmmm.

How's that for blogging?

Bad Blogger

Not only do I not blog frequently, when I have a perfectly bloggable event happen, I don't even take proper pictures so I can blog about it!

This past Saturday I went on a cleaning spree, and once the bathroom was done,I put all fo the bathmats in the wash and set them to go.

The washer stops, and I ask Jeff to put it into the dryer, but he finds it to still be full of soapy dirty water, and apparently one of the bathmats has completely disintegrated, sending little carpet threads and nasty plastic sand through the pump.

Uh-oh


Sure enough, after a bit of sleuthing it would appear that the pump is either burned out or clogged. It's a nearly 10 year old machine, so this isn't too upsetting. Worst case scenario we get a new washer, right? However, I'm not the type to just toss something that may be fixed so I get out my handy Reader's Digest Household Hints and Handy Tips book (Thanks Mom and Dad! Best book ever!) and look up what might be the problem.

I break out the putty knife and open the front and sure enough, the pump is sitting there, hot and not really pumping out any water.

Break out the hose and start bailing the washer, including all of the junk that came from the disintegrated rug. Then carefully pull off the hoses connected to the pump.

Did you know that there's still about a half gallon or so water left in the bottom of the washer's basin even after getting all the water out of the basket? I didn't.

Glush! All over the floor, me, and down the register. I start trying to dam the water away from going down the drain and all the time shouting for Jeff (who was in the bathroom and couldn't hear me). So there I was, fiercly pinching shut the hose from the washer with my left hand, and pushing water away from the air register with the right and shouting for Jeff to come help.

He's shows up to my panicked cries, and we get it mopped up. Fortunately not much went down the vent and Jeff was able to mop it up with his much longer arms. We flush out the basket with fresh water until no more carpet bits or backing comes out, and I run water through the clogged parts of the pump until it works.

The question then was is the pump burned out, or is it salvageable? I get out my handy voltmeter and determine that the motor is still conducting normally, so I'm hopeful.

A bit of a struggle to get the hoses reattached, curse words and a cry for some vegetable oil to lube this %$^& thing may have been uttered, but I finally got it back together and plugged back in. We poured a couple of gallons of fresh water into the basket and turned the washer to pump it out. . . .

Success.

Without a $200 service call from Sears.

Go me!

Unfortunately there are no pictures though, because I'm a bad blogger.

Maybe for 2011 I should have a set blogging schedule. Even if there's nothing to say, I will blog!

2010

Goodbye 2010. I'm really not sure what I did to piss you off, and I'd like to apologize.

Hello 2011. I'm hoping we started the year off on the right foot, and that this year is better than last for me and my family. I'm going to start recording the good things that happen this year, more than I did for last year.

Let's start the year off with a lovely finished object!

Made this hat for my friend Angela. Fisherman's Wool, with needle-felted accents.

Five Years

In August the 5 year anniversary of me working for my company rolled around. Five years. The longest I've been in any one place working or learning in my adult life.

It has been good. The first four years were steady and routine. We had one contract that I primarily worked on, with occasional jaunts to do emergency response work. In the last year we lost two contracts and gained three or four more (two of which I work on steadily). The last year has been a roller coaster ride settling in to the new contracts, and that ride continues on into 2011. Still, this job has been good to me.

I knit at lunch and my coworkers are extremely bemused by my hobby. Travel has not been a constant, but is often an enjoyable break from a desk job. Office politics are essentially nil. There's one coworker I'd rather be without, but I try to take him with the tablespoon of salt that is necessary and go on with my life, disallowing him power over my emotions.

At our Holiday lunch paid for by the company, everyone reaching a 5-year increment received a little plaque and a pin recognizing their service. Five years earns you a tiny ruby in a pin. In terms of metaphysics, it is believed that rubies improve motivation and the setting of goals; the stone of love, energy, passion, power, and a zest for life.

I'll take that :)