brileyknits

Almost...

2011-03-26T16:34:00.002-05:00

So, I am almost back in the habit of blogging regularly. It is at least back on my mind on a regular basis. I think I will get there.

I actually have much to talk about, but haven't been taking photos. When I tried to do it this afternoon my camera died. I only managed to get a few photos. So, I'll share everything else another time.

I finished the top down sweater a couple of weeks ago. I absolutely love it, though it did turn out a bit larger than I expected it to. The unspun Icelandic was wonderful to work with, and I will definitely use it again. This sweater is thick, and warm!

I will also definitely be using Barbara Walker's top down method for sweaters again. Being able to try the sweater on as you are making it really helps, and it was so much easier than I expected it to be.

I have put the blue ski sweater on hold for a bit. I didn't like the way the sleeves were coming out. So, I decided to stuff the whole thing in the closet, and take it out in a few weeks when I can have a fresh perspective.

I hadn't been crocheting lately, and one evening two weeks ago I was really longing to have a hook in my hand. So, I dug out a basket of scraps & odd balls, and a big bag of natural Irish wool my brother had picked up for me at a yard sale, and got to work on a scrap afghan.

There are 36 nine inch squares here. I intend to have a total of 48, to make the center of the blanket 54" x 72". I'll then add a striped border that (if I have enough yarn) will bring the dimensions to 66" x84".

I hope to be posting about the other things I have going on in the next week. If I can only remember to buy batteries...

I Think It Might Just Work

2011-03-08T14:49:00.004-05:00

I think I may just be able to get back in the habit of blogging regularly. I had intended to post last week, but the flu got in the way. I am back this week, though.

Last week's post was going to be about projects I had completed in my long absence, but after two weeks I have so many other things to post about I will play catch up another time.

While I was sick I spent several days confined to my room. Most of that time was sleeping, but there were several stretches of several hours in which I couldn't sleep at all. During that time my joints hurt too much to knit, and my head and eyes hurt too much to read. I almost went completely crazy until I realized I could actually tolerate spinning with out an excess of discomfort. It had been quite some time since I had sat down at my wheel, and I really loved it! First I spun a bobbin very fine brown cashmere. Then I spun a bobbin of fine-ish, but slubby white yak. Then I dug out a bobbin of finely spun camel down from ages ago. I plied them all together into this beautiful worsted weight yarn. I have about 200 yards, with lots of camel and cashmere left over. I used all of the yak, but I am thinking of ordering more so I can spin up another couple hundred yards of this amazing stuff. I'm picturing a sweater made with half comercially spun, smooth yarn, and half with this.

After my last post I got several comments about how I knit a sweater on the fly with no planning/swatching/measuring. Well, this current WIP is the complete opposite.

Made with Classic Elite Skyy Tweed that I got on close out forever ago, this will eventuallly be a Scandinavian Ski Sweater. This is the entire body. When the sleeves are done sleev openings will be steeked out of the colour work portion, and the top with be joined at each side for the shoulders with live stitches left in the center to work a collar.

This project definitely required a great deal of planning. I am using Elizabeth Zimmerman's instructions for the sweater proportions/construction, and all of the patterns are from Luise Robert's 1000 Great Knitting Motifs.

The electronically sharpend, and back-lit image actually shows the colour-work in a bit more detail than the naked eye. Because the light blue has flecks of dark blue, and the dark blue has flecks of the light, the patterning is actually more subtle in reality. I really like it. You have to give it a good look to really make out what's there.

This will be my first time steeking a major project like this. Everyone seems to think I should be nervous, but I'm really kind of excited to do it. I'm sure I will be blogging more about it when the time comes.

After all the intense planning, and colour work of the ski sweater I really needed another casual, intuitive project. Actually, I had expected to do much more planning and swatching for this piece, but it just wanted to work itself into a sweater naturally.

I had bought some unspun icelandic, because I've just been dying to try it. This past weekend I was dragged to an evening of Bingo, and decided I needed some knitting on hand to keep me from going nuts. Since the ski sweater was not at a point that I knit with out giving it total attention I grabbed some of the icelandic, with the idea of doing some swatching.
I cast on 60 sitches, and worked 1X1 ribbing for two inches, then switches to stockinette. After a couple of rounds I realized I already had a perfect collar.

I had been wanting to try a pattern from Barbara G Walker's Knitting From The Top, and the perfect moment was born!

When I bought the wool I was thinking of another icelandic yoked sweater, but I quickly realized I liked the weight and thickness of the fabric just as it was, and didn't care to incorporate any stranding. So, I decided on this fading stripe pattern to give this sweater a little visual interest. In the photo the yoke is complete, and I have knitted down the body just a couple of inches.

I am having so much fun with knitting this sweater top down. The method really lends itself to knitting with out much planning. Once I knit the neck, I checked my gauge, and figured out how many stitches I would need to increase over the progression of the yoke. Once all of the yoke stitches were on my needles I tried it on to see how much longer I wanted it before splitting off the body, and arms.

Once I made the split I tried it on, decided I wanted more room in the under arm, ribbeb back a few rows to the full yoke, and knit again until I was satisfied. It will be great when I get to the waist and sleeves to be able to try it on, and be able to really see when it's the perfect length.

I'm Still Here!

2011-02-21T07:32:00.004-05:00

I can't believe I only managed to get in two posts for all of 2010, and now it's two months into 2011, and I'm just getting to my first post.

I really do want to keep my blog alive, and have lots to post about. So, here I am, attempting to get back into the swing of things (again).

This is the most recently completed sweater that I have made for myself. I finished it about two weeks ago, but it was started way back in October. It was a completely unplanned project, that I think evolved very nicely.

Back in October my friend Maureen had asked me to attend an equestrian show with her. I agreed to go, but honestly did not have much interest. On the way to her house I realized I had forgotten my knitting, and didn't feel like I could sit through the show with out something to keep me occupied. So, I told her we had to leave a bit early to stop at the yarn shop.

The Hub Mills Store is only a few minutes away from her. So, we went there, and I found several mill-end cones of Classic Elite Montera. This is an aran weight 50% wool/ 50% llama single ply yarn. The label suggested a size 9 needle. So, I picked one up, and just cast on. No gauge swatch, not even any measurements for the sweater. (I lost 30 Lbs in 2010, and didn't know my new measurements.)

By the end of the horse show I had about 12" of the body done. Then it was time to decide what I was actually going to do with the tube I had been knitting. I had always wanted to incorporate some of Barbara G. Walker's Mosaic knitting patterns into a sweater, and decided with the two colours I had that this was the time.

If you are not familiar with Mosaic Knitting you should definitely check your local Library for the book. It's two colour knitting, but only one colour is used at a time. The pattern is created entirely by slipped stitches.

Shortly after I started the mosaic patterning in the sweater body I had to put this project to the side. It hibernated for a while, until I finally decided to get it finished a few weeks ago. Since most of my sweaters are made seamlessly, with the EPS, I still hadn't decided on the shoulder style.

I decided to use the Shirt Yoke Sweater. I really love the way it turned out. The back of the shoulders is really neat & clean looking. Much better than the normal back saddle for this style sweater.

Shockingly, with out a gauge swatch, or even knowing my size, this sweater ended up fitting beautifully as a second layer, and it is so warm I can wear it out in 10 degree weather with out a coat.

The next project I'm going to share today is a sweater I made for my sister. She had asked me for a warm sweater to wear in the spring. She wanted something to wear when it was too warm for her winter coat, but too cool for indoor clothing. I had decided to make it as a birthday present, and cast on only hours after finishing the mosaic sweater.

As usual, I cast on the body tube for a seamless sweater without a complete idea where I would go with it. This time I did have measurements, and gauge. When I was about 2 inches into knitting this sweater I received a call, "We had to change the family birthday party to this Saturday." It was Sunday. I had 1 week to complete the sweater!

Luckily I wasn't married to a specific design at that point. I had thoughts of a fancy Fair Isle yoke that were immediately chucked. Instead I decided to try a pattern I had been wanting to make for quite some time, Meg Swanson's Box the Compass.

Luckily, my sister is rather small, and the Cascade Ecological Wool I was using knits up quickly. The sweater was done on Friday. 6 days for an entire sweater is a record for me! I was thrilled to have done it, but I hope to never have to do it again.

The sweater fit perfectly, and was very happily received.

I'm now about 10 days into my newest sweater project. No pictures yet, but I hope to share a few more of my recent projects before I finish it.

Quick Update

2010-08-08T08:59:00.003-05:00

So, I have not gotten back into blogging as regularly as I had hoped, but I do have a couple FOs to share:

This is a tote bag I made for an exchange in the Peaches &Creme group on ravelry. My partner was skullsnbats, and said those were two of her favorite things.

I used my Meredith Tote pattern, and America's Best Cabled Cotton (which is my favorite for totes and market bags). I added some skull beads to the top of the bag to personalize it a bit more to my swap partner's taste.

The tote pattern is currently unavailable, but should be in print again soon.

This is a gift a made for a friend's little sister. She is a huge Harry Potter fan, and I thought a magic wand might be fun for her, and was very easy to make out of a birch knitting needle. The wand case was knit free styke out of Patton's Silk Bamboo. I added small hematite stars to the trim, and pewter dragon buttons to the draw string to add to its magical appearance.

A roll of rice paper made a perfect scroll to roll around the wand inside it's case. I've never actually met the recipient, but am told she was quite excited about this.

I have a new project OTN, started on a road trip to Chicago last week, but I haven't taken a photo yet. I'n not sure how well it is turning out. I brought yarn, and needles, but didn't think to bring any patterns with me. The yarn was purchased for a pair of mittens for my niece, so I just started free-styling some mittens. Free styling colourwork with out any pens/paper to take notes is not the easiest thing. So far I am happy with the look of the first mitten (didn't gat far) but I am a little concerned it will be too small. I think I will put them on hold until I can have her try on what I have done.

I had a fun surprise yesterday. While in Borders with my brother, I found this magazine. I have a pattern in it, and didn't know when it would be hitting the shelves.

My afghan (I think it's on page 58) is an expanded version of my Iris Baby Blanket (scroll down), the pattern for which had not been published previously. This version has larger motifs, and directions for two sizes. I also worked it in a more subtle colour sceme. Unfortunately I don't have a copy of the nice magazine photo, yet. I do have a picture of the blanket just as it was finished:

WOW! It's Been How Long?

2010-07-02T11:23:00.003-05:00

So, for the longest time I have been telling myself, "you have to get back to blogging." Somehow it seems that all of my time is taken up these days. Lately, however, I have received several requests to get back to my blog, and as luck would have it, I found myself with some free time today!

It has been so long that I am going to only highlight a few things in this post. Even though I have had significantly less time for my projects there has still been too much done to cover it all at once. So, here is a small sampling of what I have been up to in 2010:

Here is my very first FO of the year. I just love it, and use it all the time!

It's the Felted Mammouth Tea Cozy by Laura Jefferson. The pattern is from Shannon Okey's book Spin to Knit. The pattern calls for a bulky weight hand spun, but I actually used Cascade Eco Wool, double stranded. The tusks are made of polymer clay. It was a fun quick project, and really keeps my tea hot a lot longer than a pot alone.

This is a more recent FO. A simple crocheted ripple blanket made with Classic Elite Bubbles. I was making this for a co-worker that had not found out the sex of her baby before birth. I picked the blue, yellow, and green knowing that there were flecks of pink through out the yarn. When I found out the baby was a girl I added a pink border with Fun Fur to pull out the pinks. It doesn't show so well in the photo, but does in person.

One of the most exciting things I have to share is that, since I have last written here, I have had my first pattern published in a magazine. It was in the June issue of Crochet World (sorry I'm so late). The pattern is Nautical Dishcloths, a trio of dishcloths based on nautical flags.

This is the photo from the magazine.

I hadn't really thought about submitting a pattern to a magazine at this point, but the people at Pisgah Yarns asked if I would, and I thought "Why not?" I was very pleased with the whole experience. The editor, Michele Maks was a joy to deal with, and it really was great fun to see my own work in the pages of a national publication.

Can't say too much, but I will have more patterns published soon.

I hope to get around to posting about more of my projects soon. Thank you so much to those of you who wrote and said that you missed my blog, and sorry to those of you who's blogs I haven't been keeping up with. Hopefully I will get the time management thing under control soon, and be back to normal in blogland!

Some FOs, and a bit of progress

2009-11-25T11:18:00.003-05:00

I feel like I have barely posted this month. That's mainly due to much of my knitting/crocheting time has been spend working on gifts. Some of the pieces have now been gifted. So, I can share.

The largest project I have been working on has been this comfort afghan for Aly. This is another group project from the Peaches & Creme group on ravelry. Aly has been suffering horribly from the effects of Lyme Disease. This summer I called to the group to make squares for her. This time around I received so many squares I couldn't even fit them all in.

Once I had all the squares I edged each one with Aly's favorite colour, and sewed them all together. Aly received her blanket yesterday, and had been feeling very yucky. She said it was the best possible day to receive such a gift.

In order to disguise the blanket a bit I managed to make sure I was sending to Aly for the group's holiday exchange. So, for her exchange gifts I made this crocheted snowflake (free pattern) out of Dazzling Diamonds. The sparkle of the thread doesn't show up well in the photo, but I really think it is the perfect thing for these ornaments.

I also made a pair of potholders. Just a simple shape in single crochet. I made one side in variegated purples, and the other in a fun multi-colour. Not exactly holiday themed, but I like them much better than the ones I started in Christmas colours, and I think Aly would, too.

My hand spun sweater has not gotten the attention I would like but it is still coming along. I decided shortly after the last time I posted about it to go with Elizabeth Zimmerman's Nalgar construction. It's a very interesting way to shape a seamless sweater. It's a reverse raglan. The body tube is knit up to armpit length, then instead of joining sleeves and decreasing, you start rapidly increasing until you can fold up the top and work the sleeves outward from there. The remaining top stitches are later kitchenered together for the shoulders.

I don't think I've explained this very well, but the instructions are in Knitting Workshop. If you don't have the book it's loaded with great stuff, and well worth checking out.

In the photo my sweater is at the point where I am ready to start the sleeves. In reality I have one sleeve nearly complete. I hope to get back to work on this week.

I hope everyone in the U.S. has a wonderful Thanksgiving, and for the rest of you, simply a great week!

Prayers For Maile Square

2009-11-23T21:54:00.003-05:00

Some of you may have already heard that my friend Maile Mauch has recently suffered a stroke. Maile is well known in the online knitting community as she runs the yahoo groups Cloth of the Week, and Monthly Threads, as well as her free pattern site K1P1 Keeping you in Stitches, and the Peaches & Creme group on Ravelry. She also publishes Clothsline Ezine, and does knitting design for Pisgah Yarn & Dyeing Co., Inc.

A few days ago Norma contacted me. She is organzing and assembling a comfort afghan made up of squares from the members of Maile's various groups. She had decided to request that the squares all be made with one of Maile's dishcloth patterns. However, she was concerned that this would exclude those who only crochet. So, I have designed a square especially for Maile, and those crocheters that wish to make a square for her blanket.

I'm publishing the pattern here, as it is the easiest place for me to make it available to those who need it. However, if you have a comfort, or prayer blanket working for another person, or for charity, please feel free to use this pattern.

Prayers for Maile Square

Materials:

1 ball Peaches & Creme in Main Colour (I used #89 camel)

1oz (probably even less) Peaches & Creme in Contrast Colour (I used #97 burgundy)

US I-9, 4.5mm crochet hook, or size needed to obtain gauge.

Yarn needle to weave in ends.

Gauge:

3.25 sc = 1 inch (this square should be worked loosely with whatever yarn is being used to avoid too much curling and puckering)

Finished Size should be 7" square or a bit larger for Maile's afghan.

Stitches/abbreviations used:

CC- contrast colour

ch- chain

FPDC- Front post double crochet- wrap yarn around hook, bring hook to front of work, insert behind the post of the stitch to be worked into, from right to left, work double crochet.

MC- main colour

sc- single crochet

slst- slip stitch

sp- space

st- stitch

yo- yarn over

Special Instructions: when two colours are being used in the same round MC should be dropped to the back of work when not in use, and picked up when needed again. CC should be carried inside the MC stitches for the entire round, and dropped to the back when the round is complete. The loose strand of MC yarn left when it it carried across the back of the CC stitches can be hidden by working the stitches in the following round over it.

Directions:

With CC, ch-4, slst to first ch to form a ring

rnd 1) ch1, 8sc into ring, slst to first stitch to join

rnd 2) ch1, 2sc in each sc around. slst to first stitch to join(16 sc)

rnd 3) ch1, sc in first 4 sc, ch2, [sc in next 4 sc, ch2] 3 times. switching to MC, slst to first stitch to join. (16 sc, 4 ch2 sp)

rnd 4) ch1, **sc in each sc, [sc, ch2, sc] in each ch2 sp** around. Switching back to CC, slst to first stitch to join. (24 sc, 4 ch2 sp)

rnd 5) ch1, **[FPDC into sc 2 rounds below, leaving the stitch from round 4 unworked] 4x- switching to MC in last yo of 4th st, sc in next 2sc, (sc, ch2, sc) in ch-2 sp, sc in next sc, switching back to CC in last yo ** 3x, then repeat once more with out switching back to CC. slst to first stitch to join. (16 sc, 16 FPDC, 4 ch2 sp)

rnd 6) ch1, **sc in each st, [sc, ch2, sc] in each ch2 sp** around. Switching back to CC, slst to first stitch to join. (40 sc, 4 ch2 sp)

rnd 7) ch1, **[FPDC into FPDC 2 rounds below, leaving the stitch from round 6 unworked] 4x- switching to MC in last yo of 4th st, sc in next 3sc, (sc, ch2, sc) in ch-2 sp, sc in next 3sc, switching back to CC in last yo of last sc ** 3x, then repeat once more with out switching back to CC. slst to first stitch to join. ( 32 sc, 16 FPDC, 4 ch2 sp).

rnd 8) ch1, **sc in each st, [sc, ch2, sc] in each ch2 sp** around. Switching back to CC, slst to first stitch to join. (56 sc, 4 ch2 sp)

rnd 9) ch1, [FPDC into FPDC 2 rounds below, leaving the stitch from round 8 unworked] 4x- switching to MC in last yo of 4th st, sc in next 5 sc, [sc, ch2, sc] in ch2 sp, sc in next 4 sc, switching to CC in last yo of 4th sc, **2FPDC in next FPDC, FPDC in next 2 FPDC, 2 FPDC in next FPDC, switching to MC in last yo of last FPDC, (there should be 6 sc from round 8 left unworked), sc in next 4 sc, [sc, ch2, sc] in ch2 sp, sc in next 4 sc, switching to CC in last yo of 4th sc** 2 times, then repeat once more with out switching back to CC at end. slst to first stitch to join. (42 sc, 22 FPDC, 4 ch2 sp)

rnd 10) ch1, **sc in each st, [sc, ch2, sc] in each ch2 sp** to last two sc. in last yo of next sc switch back to CC, DO NOT slst. (71 sc, 4 ch2 sp).

rnd 11) 2FPDC in next FPDC, FPDC in next 2 FPDC, 2 FPDC in next FPDC, switching to MC in last yo of last FPDC, (there should be 6 sc from round 10 left unworked). drop CC to back of work, **sc in each st, [sc, ch2, sc] in each ch2 sp** around. slst to first stitch to join. ( 74 sc, 6 FPDC, 4 ch2 sp)

round 12) ch1, **sc in each st, [sc, ch2, sc] in each ch2 sp** around. slst to first stitch to join.

(88 sc, 4 ch2 sp)

secure yarn. weave in all ends.

FO: Icelandic Yoked Sweater

2009-11-08T10:17:00.003-05:00

I finished the Icelandic Yoked sweater this week. When I mentioned it last I would talk more about the unusual way I went about knitting this sweater. So, I think it's time.

The sweater was made with Classic Elite Skye Tweed, which I got on closeout at their outlet store. I bought every skein they had left in the orange colour, and I was a bit nervous that I would run short. So, I decided to start this sweater in the middle with a provisional cast on.

Immediately after I began I realized that not only did I have two different dye lots on the main colour, but one of the lots seemed to be spun a lot tighter than the other. Honestly, if you held the two strands of yarn side by side you would think they were two completely different yarns.

I was determined to make this sweater with the Skye Tweed. So, I pressed on, alternating strands from the two different lots for each round (luckily I had the same amount from each lot).

I knit the body of the sweater up six inches, then knit the sleeves (also with a provisional cast on), and joined them for the yoke. I had originally thought I would work the yoke directly from Elizabeth Zimmerman's charts, but I quickly realized it would be way too shallow for me. So, I improvised after the first chart.

Once the yoke was worked to the last round before the collar I pulled out the provisional cast on and knit the rest of the body length. When I was done I was shocked to see how much of the yarn was left. So, I decided to use a hemmed edge.

This was my first time working hemmed edges in a knitted garment, and I was pretty pleased with the results. The sleeve and body cuffs have crisp straight edges. The neck was much more difficult, and there is a slight pucker at the back. I am being assured that I am the only one who sees this. I should have had someone take a picture of it while I was wearing it yesterday.

The sleeves also ended up a touch shorter than I expected after the yoke was finished. This was no big deal, since I had used a provisional cast-on. It only meant they started to taper a bit sooner that I had originally planned. They still fit just fine.

Also the two different dye lots really don't show in the finished product. The yarn that seemed so much thinner bloomed when I washed it, and I am guessing that it missed some final stage of washing/softening during production.

When I finished that sweater I immediately move on to the Icelandic wool I had spun for a sweater this summer. Here is the first foot of the body (Yes, I am doing another seamless sweater) worked with the three different shades of gray.

The finished yarn is even bulkier than I anticipated, and is knitting up super fast. I'm getting 3 stitches to the inch on size 10 needles, and I'm almost ready to start the yoke. The top half will be done in two tones of brown.

I also learned to sew a zipper into a knit garment this weekend. I'd done this once before, but had been very unhappy with the results. So, a couple of months ago I had written to Denise, who taught the steeking class I took at my LYS about a year ago, and asked her if she would consider teaching a class on installing zippers. She wrote back saying that she was no longer teaching knitting classes, but would also be interested in learning better techniques for installing zippers. She invited my brother Gerry, and I to come over to her house for a day of experimenting with zippers. So, we all knit some swatches, and searched our knitting libraries. I have to say that I was shocked with how little information we found.

I ended up using a technique I found in an out of print Barbara Abbey book, The Complete Book of Knitting, that I picked up for 20 cents at a quilt fair. It recommended putting a firm crochet chain on the inside edge of your selvage, basting in the zipper, then hand sewing it to the crochet chain. I'm pretty happy with the results. It's not perfect, but it is so much better than my previous attempts.

Denise got beautiful results sewing in the zipper by machine. Check out her blog for details.

2009-10-26T15:45:00.002-05:00

The past few weeks have been very busy for me, I had several visitors from out of town, and been been on the go constantly until a few days ago.

Now that I have gotten a bit of rest it's time to get my blog all caught up.

I'll start with the promised better photo of the seamless hybrid. This was worn on the day I went hiking in the White Mountains with my friend Kate. She is the closest of my out of town visitors, and had just come up from Boston for a weekend of foliage peeping.

Hiking the mountains was one of the things I was looking forward to most when I moved to New Hampshire, and finally after 3 years I've been getting some in this fall. We got lots of great photos (one of Kate's was even on Good Morning America), But because I actually have project photos I will only share my favorite:

This is not a good shot of the foliage at all, but I love how clear the reflection in this puddle is!

Another one of my visitors was my friend Maureen. I've known Maureen for 14 years, but hadn't seen her in four years, since she moved to Oregon. Maureen appreciates hand-made items more than almost anyone I know. So, I totally wanted a hand knit gift for her visit, but because she kept wavering on whether or not she was coming I was unprepared.

Five days before her visit I decided I'd better get to work. I selected a yarn that I spun from a blend of microfiber, and bamboo. Then, after much internal debate, decided on Jan's Sensational Scarf from One Skein Wonders. It was a great choice. The one row pattern went quick, and made a beautiful scarf. It also allowed me to just knit until the yarn was all used. My 148 yards of yarn made a 5.5' scarf, which was finished in a single day.

I have also finally finished the Iris Blanket. I pulled out the edging, added more motifs, and re-edges with out the orange I had originally used. I love the blanket, but I am so happy it's done!

My third visitor was a long time blogging friend that I have tried to meet up with a couple times in the past. We tried to meet up summer '08 when I was in her area, then again this past spring when we were both in New York at the same time. Both times things came up to keep us from meeting. Well we finally did it!

A couple of weeks ago Cat came to Andover, MA. Her husband was there for some training class, and she decided to tag along. I picked her up in Andover, and took her over to Lowell where we had a wonderful vegetarian lunch. After lunch we went to check out A Brush With Art. (I must remember to take a picture of the beautiful gift Cat bought for me while we were there and share it in my next post) We finished our tour of Lowell off with a visit to the Hub Mills Factory Store, where Cat and I both got wonderful yarns.
I bought a bunch of Skye Tweed, which is most unfortunately discontinued. I'm making Elizabeth Zimmerman's Icelandic Yoked Sweater. This sweater is turning into quite an adventure. I'll talk more about it once it is completed.

I have one last project to share, and I think I am officially caught up on my three weeks' absence.

My current on the go project is the Ridges and Ribs socks by Criminy Jickets. These have been in my queue for some time now, and I'm so glad to finally be working on them. They really are

The perfect take-along project. They stay in my car, and anytime I need to sit and wait, or if I stop in the middle of my day for a coffee break they are there. They have enough going on to keep me interested, but the pattern is very easy to memorize.

This came in especially handy last week when the swat team was called in to make an arrest a few streets over from me. They made a rushed evacuation of the neighborhood, and for the three hours we all sat in the town meeting hall I was the only one with anything to entertain myself!

FO: Seamless Hybrid

2009-10-03T12:49:00.004-05:00

The Seamless Hybrid is finished. I used 7.5 balls of the yarn, which means I have enough of it to make a second sweater. Not bad for $15!

I wish the photos came out better, and I will probably try for more another day.

I followed Elizabeth's directions almost exactly. The two things I did differently:

I started my sleeves with less stitches than recommended. I like a usually like a snug wrist. Actually with this particular yarn I think a wider wrist would have been fine.

I brought up the front of the neck by decreasing a stitch on the front of each saddle after the shoulder shaping was done. I finished the sweater with out doing this, and the neck front hung way too low. So, I ripped back and added some extra rows to incorporate the decreasing. I'm much happier with it now.

I did get one MAJOR shock with this sweater.

If you read what I had previously posted about it you know that I started this project as something I could work on in the car, in the dark. I started it rather quickly due to this, and although I did make a gauge swatch I never washed that swatch. Whenever I buy yarn in the $1 bin at The Hub Mills store I expect that the yarn may have sustained some damage, or had been lost for a while. With this yarn I expected that it had been lost in storage, and possibly crushed in that storage. I think I was right.

After I finished the sweater, and was happy with the neck I put it for a soak in the sink. When I took it out 15 minutes later it was HUGE! I would say at least 30% larger than it was when it went into the sink. I was in shock. I never expected such a dramatic difference.

Luckily after careful blocking, and the yarn fluffing up as it dried the sweater is only a bit bigger than I expected. The sleeves ended up about 1" longer than I would have liked, and the rest of the sweater really still fits fine.

Lesson learned: Always wash your swatch!

Sweater Time

2009-09-25T13:51:00.002-05:00

I've finished the Child's Striped Pullover. This was my first time knitting a sweater in pieces, then seaming it. The very thought of doing it has always frightened me, but it worked out okay. I'm glad I started small, as my seaming was a bit wonky on the first side, but it was neat and completely even on the second.

When I started I thought it was great that I was using a highly textured yarn (Lionbrand's Homespun) as it would hide any mistakes I made. However, as I got to work I realized that the texture of the [black] yarn also made it very difficult to see what I was doing. All in all I am pleased with the finished product, and I'm ready to seam up more sweaters in the future.

I had mentioned in a previous post that I had started a project that I would be able to work on in the dark. It's still not much to look at, but here it is- two sleeves, and half a torso:

On a recent trip to the Hub Mills Store I found 15 balls of Adrienne Vittadini Aria in the $1 bin, and just couldn't pass it up. It is a bulky weight wool/nylon blend that is very soft & Fuzzy. Although this is not the type of yarn I would imagine using for a sweater for myself, the texture reminds me of a favorite sweater from a long time ago. So, I wanted to get to work on a something right away. Since stockinette in the round is easy to do in the dark I decided it would become a simple seamless sweater. I have a few inches to go on the body before I have to join it all and decide on the shoulder shaping, but I am leaning towards Elizabeth Zimmerman's seamless Hybrid. While looking through projects on ravelry tagged with "men" I have noticed that there are two sweaters that seem to look great on everyone- no matter the colour or size. They are the seamless hybrid, and Jared Flood's Cobblestone. Since I have already made the Cobblestone the Seamless Hybrid seems like a great way to go with this.

This is exactly the time of year that I really love to be making a sweater, when the New England air is just beginning to feel like fall, and you know that crisp cool days will be here soon. Last Saturday was actually very cool here, and with the hopes of catching a glimpse of the first bits of red and gold in the trees I took my mother out for a drive in the mountains. We stopped along the way for an impromptu hike, and my mother managed to coerce me to have my picture taken. Luckily (because I hate posing for photographs) I was wearing a sweater I made at this time last year, and had never been photographed in. So, here I am in my Desert Sweater.

Spread a bit thin

2009-09-16T12:52:00.002-05:00

I hate that I had finally gotten back to posting here regularly then had to miss last week, but it really was a chaotic week. I had so much going on that I still feel a bit frazzled even though my life's normalcy was restored on Monday.

You might think being that busy would mean that I knit less, and usually that would be right. However, I managed to find a new project for each unusual situation. I had already started a pair of socks for my everyday take along project. That was added to the crocheted sweater, and primula shawl after I had abandoned them for the Danish Fisherman's mittens. Then I realized I was going to have to spend a significant amount of time as a passenger in a car during the evening, and I had to cast on a project that I could work on in the dark, and then I realized I had to come up with a gift for a friend's first child's first birthday, and had to cast on another project...

I now have so many projects on the needles I don't know what to do. I haven't yet taken photos of them all. So, Here's a quick update on the two that seemed to be in the most photo ready stages:

Work on the crocheted sweater continued until about a week ago. The front is finished, and I have started the sleeves. I realized about 1/4 of the way into the first sleeve that I hate it. I really don't like the way they are shaped, and I have to figure out an alternative plan/design for them. I'm not sure how I will do it yet. I'm thinking of joining the front and the back and working the sleeves from the body of the sweater down. I figure it will be easy to see the shaping as I go that way, and make adjustments where/whenever I want to with out more ripping back than is totally necessary. Any advice on that would be welcomed!

This is the gift for my friend's son. It's the Child's Striped Yoke Sweater (rav link) from Lion Brand Yarns. It is a free pattern on the Homespun label. I figured a child's sweater in a bulky yarn could easily be done in a week. I started it Monday night, and am over half done already. Here is the front and back seamed together at the shoulders, with the rolled neck worked on afterwards. I still have to finish the sleeves before sewing up the sides. This is the smallest size, 24 months. However, the recipient is the largest 1 year old I have ever seen.

This project has been a lot more fun to work on than I expected, and it is totally gratifying to see a project move so quickly (especially since it seems I am really good at starting things, but not finishing them lately!)

Summer Goals Revisited

2009-09-02T12:58:00.002-05:00

Several weeks back, in this post, I talked about 3 project goals I had for the summer. Although summer is not technically over for almost three weeks, the beginning of September seems like a good time to take a look at how far I have gotten.

Leaning to quilt was one of my goals ( I think this is a block I've not yet shown here. Sorry if it's a repeat). My project currently looks nothing like the basic windowpane sort of pattern I had begun with. I am about 1/2 way through a queen sized quilt top, and I am thinking I will end up with a finished quilt much nicer than I had dared hoped for out of my first attempt.

I also wanted to spin enough yarn for a sweater to be knit this fall. Here is 28oz of aran to bulky weight (6-8 wpi) Icelandic 2 ply. I probably should have paid closer attention to the thickness of the singles as I spun them. 6 wpi to 8 wpi is a pretty big difference when knitting, but as long as it dries to be pretty much the same I think it will be okay. There is only one skein that looks thinner than the rest, and I can use that for the waist and sleeve cuffs.

I have made an almost firm decision about the sweater I will make from this. I have to work up a swatch or two, and do some math before that becomes a completely firm decision.

The third goal was to crochet a sweater. I chose Treva McCain's Wave Front Men's Sweater, from an Annie's Attic crochet book, Sweater's for Men.

When I first posted about this sweater I had just finished the very boring, and boxy looking back panel. I'm now just over half way through the front. It's an interesting design, and I am excited to see how it all comes together in the end, but in the future I suspect I will stick to knit sweaters.

As for the other two projects I had mentioned in the previous summer goals post:

The primula shawl is still coming along slowly. I keep going back and forth in my mind between two ways of expanding the pattern to make the shawl big enough. Until I can commit I can't work too far.

The Iris baby blanket was a few stitches away from completion when I decided I didn't like the size. So, it is awaiting the day I feel like ripping out the edging, and working on a few more motifs.

Danish Fisherman's Mittens

2009-08-26T11:36:00.002-05:00

Last Monday I was meeting a friend for coffee, and wanted to bring a project in case I was waiting ( I'm paranoid about being late, so I am usually extra early). While I was looking for just the right WIP to bring I realized that the only small(ish) project I have OTN right now is the primula shawl, which I've decided, after much tinking, is not a good project to work on while I might be easily distracted. So, I needed something new.

Luckily Mondays are my errand days, and I was traveling very close to Patternworks. It was the perfect opportunity to begin a new take along project. Patternworks generally has some wonderful odd-ball yarns in it's sale bin dirt cheap. This time was no exception. I picked up four balls of Classic Elite Classic One Fifty, two in "radish" and two in "pewter".

Now I just needed the small simple pattern conducive to on the go knitting. My next stop was the library. Where I picked up Marcia Lewandowski's Folk Mittens.

Here's what I ended up with. The Danish Fisherman's Mittens traditionally have two thumbs each, so they can be turned around when one thumb wears out, making them last twice as long. I decided I would risk having just the one thumb each.

The pattern was perfect, though. The stranded colour work kept it interesting, but the complete regularity of the patterning meant that I could work with out fear of error even in the most distracting environments. Actually, it was so perfect that these mittens quickly went from my take along project to my only working project.

I knit the first mitten exactly as charted by Marcia, but I did not like the top. I never like rounded top mittens when I make them, so I should have expected it, but these were a bit too long as well.

I ended up ripping the mitten back to the middle of my pinky nail, and started angular decreased. I had to recenter the starting point of my rounds to get them in the correct orientation to the thumb gore, and this cause a kind of awkward looking red stripe. I decided to make this the left hand mitten, which would keep the stripe on the inside, and move the thumb gore on the next mitten to avoid repeating the stripe. It worked just fine.

The mittens used up about 48 grams of the red, and 38 grams of the grey. I bought 100 grams of each, so I have enough for another set of mittens. I'm kind of excited about this, because this may possibly be the nicest yarn I have ever used. Okay, I think I say that about 90% of all Classic Elite Yarns, but this one truly is wonderful. It's super soft merino, but it is cable plied, which makes it firm, and strong. I can't wait to see how it wears. I see it becoming a staple in my stash.

My Very First Project

2009-08-19T14:01:00.004-05:00

I was digging through a box in my storage unit recently and came across this:

My very first yarn project ever. It's a throw made of Lion Brand Homespun. The entire body is worked in double crochet, and it has a single crochet border.

You can see that this was before I understood the importance of the dye lot.

It was also before I truly understood the function of a turning chain. Each of these stripes is made using a full skein of yarn. I worked with the given colour until I didn't have enough yarn to complete another row, then switched to a new skein. So why are the stripes at the top so much thinner than the stripes at the bottom? Because the whole piece is about 8" wider at the top. I kept increasing at the beginning of the row with out ever realizing I was doing it.

This photo shows how crooked it really is. I can see why I chose to toss it in storage. However, now that I have rediscovered it I love it, imperfections and all. It's actually the perfect thing to grab in the middle of the night if the air conditioning has made my bedroom just a little too cool.

This past weekend I went to the World Quilt Show in Manchester, NH. There were tons of quilts, and tons of vendors. It was really a great way to get out of the heat and spend the afternoon.

I took lots of pictures, but I am only going to share this one here. Although this was not my favorite quilt in the show I was still amazingly impressed by it. Read the description below:

Almost 53 THOUSAND pieces! And it's hand quilted, too.

Also, while at the quilt show I bought several black and white fabrics to work into my quilt. Here's what I did when I got home:

2009-08-12T13:37:00.002-05:00

It seems that I am finally back to blogging regularly, after a very long time of only posting here sporadically. I really do enjoy blogging. It helps me stay focused on my projects. So, I am going to try to continue posting weekly.

I've actually done quite a bit over the past week, and will hold a bit back for another post. This one will be about some on going WIPs.

Here's the crocheted baby blanket. It almost finished- fully assembled, and being edged. I think it will require more blocking than I had hoped, but over all I'm pretty pleased with it.

I have finished the second section of the primula shawl. It's hard to photo-document the progress of a circular shawl. Here is a small section stretched out over a dinner plate so you can see a bit of the pattern.

This project reinforce my usual thoughts about not posting gift projects until they are complete and gifted. Last week I was telling Rita, my co-worker for whom this shawl is intended, about the quilt I am working on, and she asked for pictures. I had forgotten I had blogged about the shawl, and gave her my blog address. Shortly after I realized what I had done, and now she knows about the shawl. She was thrilled. I guess it was almost as good as surprising her with a finished shawl, but not quite the same. For those of you who also see my projects on Ravelry, the shawl is entitled "crazy lady" because that is my nickname for Rita.

Speaking of the quilt, I've worked another log cabin square for it. I will need six more this size if I want to make the entire front of the quilt in log cabin squares. I am definitely leaning in that direction right now.

I have a couple of small FO's since I have blogged last, too. I think I am going to write up a pattern for one and post it here another day.

Dave, don't look.

2009-08-04T10:53:00.003-05:00

Although one of my readers has asked me NOT to blog about my quilting (for fear he would be tempted to try it) I just can not resist sharing my progress.

I finished the four log cabin blocks I needed to make the reverse colour scheme of the large block I showed yesterday. Once again I am beyond thrilled! I keep looking at these pieces thinking "I can't believe I made that!"

At this point I am thinking I will have to continue with the log cabin squares.

Here are the two squares together. Each piece is made of four 1' blocks. SO, they are both about 2' square. I am thinking 9 of them would make a lovely quilt top. However there are a few other things I would like to try. So, not sure if I will try and incorporate them into this quilt.

At some point I will blog about knitting and crocheting again, but there is no blog worthy progress at the moment.

Becoming a sampler?

2009-08-03T10:12:00.003-05:00

As I'm putting together blocks for my first quilt I keep having the desire to try something just a little different.

I've never really been a fan of the log cabin quilt. Well, not until I picked up a book of piecework projects at my local library. I can't recall the name of the book, but it had the most beautiful log cabin projects in it. So, I decided I had to try a little log cabining for my quilt.

Above is the first square I made, and I loved it.

Then I moved on to a second square. It's sort of a reversal of the colour scheme of the first.

Then I joined 4 squares in the first design, and I am blown away.

I'm not sure yet how it will all come together, but I am really enjoying the process.

Quick progress update.

2009-07-28T09:57:00.002-05:00

Last night I was knitting the Primula shawl onto a longer needle. It seemed like the perfect time to stretch it out a bit and get a couple photos in which you can actually see a bit of the lace patterning. Unfortunately all of my really long cables were in use in other projects, so the edges are still pretty bunched up, but you can see the center blossom fairly well.

I've also gotten a bit further with the quilt. Some of the fabrics I used in the first block were not going to make it through an entire quilt. So, I came up with a second block design. I have a few of each block done at this point. This project will probably not be touched again for at least a week, but I'm glad to have gotten a bit accomplished.

Summer Goals

2009-07-25T13:25:00.004-05:00

In May I set three crafting goals for the summer. At the end of June I hadn't touched a single project of the three. So, July has been spent working towards reaching those goals. I don't have a finished project yet, but I have three WIPS:

This is the most boring to look at for the moment. I have been developing a guilty conscience about calling myself a crochet designer and never crocheting any garments.

The reality is that I just prefer knit garments, but I really do want to stretch my crocheting skills. So, I decided to crochet a sweater this summer. This is the back of the sweater, which was worked in less than 1 day (maybe I don't like knitted sweaters better!) I had a good deal done on the front as well, until I realized it was HUGE and I needed to go down a hook size in the front. I'm getting gauge now, but there is too little done to photograph.

I also wanted to spin the yarn for a hand knit sweater this summer. I seem to always want to make a new sweater in October. So, I figured it would be great to spin the yarn for it over the summer.

This is about 60-70% of the yarn here. (3 hanks of fawn, 2 brown, 3 light grey, 1 dark grey) It is all Icelandic, most of which is from a farm in Maine. I bought the fiber from the farmer last fall while I was at the Fryeburg State Fair in Maine.

The dark grey is a commercially processed roving. There is also black, but it isn't plied yet. I have lots more of the two greys- they will make up the main colours of the sweater with the browns and black adding accents. I haven't fully committed to a pattern yet. I had wanted to spin the yarn a light worsted weight, however the fiber seemed to have a different opinion. It's more aran to bulky, averaging 9 WPI.

My third goal was to learn to quilt. For years I have been staring at quilts at fairs, in museums, and shops, and dying to have one. Not one made by a stranger, though. I wanted one of my very own design. It really all started years ago when I saw a stunning art quilt display at the Brush Art Gallery.

I thought I might wimp out of this project this summer, and say that the duvet cover I made was like my practice quilt, but when that was done, and I saw how crisp and square my corners were it got me really excited to get into some real piece work.

You can see from my very first completed quilt block above that it becomes more difficult to get those nice squared corners while working with many smaller pieces. Even though my first blocks have been far from perfect I will keep them and put them into a quilt. Hopefully each new block will improve, and the finished quilt will document my progress.

I have also started a new shawl to replace the super-fine merino shawl I frogged. This one is made with Plymouth Yarns Alpaca Prima, a fingering weight 100% alpaca. I'm using the Primula Design from Marianne Kinzel's First Book of Modern Lace Knitting.

This is a "coffee cloth" pattern. It's sort of a large doily, or very small table cloth, knit in size 60 crochet thread. I've never seen size 60 thread, but I imagine it's about the size of sewing thread, maybe a touch thicker.

I was hoping that the fingering weight yarn and large needles (4.0mm) would make the design large enough to be a shawl with out altering the pattern at all. I've currently knit about 1/3 of the rounds in the pattern, and I am guessing that it's going to be about 44" across. So, I will definitely need to come up with a plan to enlarge, or add on to the pattern.

I have one last project to share today. It's one that really should have been done by now. It's the last of the baby blankets I need to make this summer. The intended recipient was born this past Monday. So, I'd better get going.

I would have been done long ago, but I put it down for a few weeks, and when I came back to it I decided I didn't like the motifs I had been using, and I started the whole thing from scratch.

It is almost done, and I can definitely have it complete and gifted long before it is outgrown.

Spinning, Frogging, and UFOs.

2009-06-30T20:53:00.005-05:00

In my last post I said I was going to post some photos of my favorite yarns from my month long spinning frenzy. Somehow I have lost/deleted several of my favorites, but I do have a couple to share.

This one is probably my absolute favorite hank from the lot. This is a fingering to sport weight yarn. It's 2 ply, with one ply being natural silver alpaca, and the other lavender dyed angora. I had never spun angora before. It is a lot more work than spinning wool, but is so soft and squishy it was well worth it. I will definitely be buying more angora. Actually, I wish I could get a few bunnies, but that's not going to happen right now. I used to have rabbits, and always thought all that fur they shed was a nuisance. Ironic, isn't it?

This is another I was very fond of. It's a blend of bamboo and micro fiber. I bought the microfiber at the New Hampshire sheep and wool festival thinking it would be fun for blending. The bamboo has been in my stash for quite some time. I blended the two together on a drum carder, but made sure that the two fibers were still discernible from each other, I wanted the texture differences to be apparent in the finished yarn. It makes me think of a glacier. It's incredibly soft, and shiny, but I don't think it will be the hardest wearing yarn I've ever spun.

I wish I had the rest of the yarn photos I wanted to post, but perhaps they will show up some day.

Since I don't have as many hand spun photos as I wanted I'll share a project disaster story.

A few months ago a co-worker of mine announced that she would be leaving. It was a second job for her, and was becoming too much. This is someone who has always loved my knitting, and has wanted me to teach her to knit herself a shawl. I decided to make her a shawl as a going away present.

I am very fortunate to have some beautiful yarn shops very close by The Elegant Ewe and Patternworks are both about a 20 minute drive. However, when it comes to lace weight yarns I am usually not thrilled with what is available, and often just spin my own.

This time I didn't have the time for it, and I decided I would have to make due with what was in the stores. I went over to the Elegant Ewe, and told them I needed a lace weight in brown ( my co-workers favorite colour for clothing). I ended up with Habu Textiles Super-fine Merino. Super-fine is no exaggeration, but I decided a double strand would work nicely.

This yarn has an incredible 747 yards per ounce! Even double stranded it didn't feel very substantial, but I was on a timeline, and I had purchased 4 one ounce cones of the yarn, and was determined that it was going to work.

I started a pi shawl on size 3 needles, and searched through all my stitch dictionaries for the perfect lace patterns to put into each ring of the shawl.

It wasn't growing as fast as I had hoped, but I had three weeks, and I had knit shawls in less time.

After about 24 hours (actual time spent knitting, not 1 day) I had a shawl the size of a bread plate, and realized that, at the very least I would have to knit the shawl half way through an increase round that Elizabeth Zimmerman had never thought necessary in her writings about the pi shawl.

Finally, I decided I had to admit defeat, and buy a heavier yarn. It would be quicker to buy a light fingering weight and start a shawl from scratch than it would be to finish this one.

(BTW- there was quite a bit of knitting worked after this photo was taken).

I went into work the day I decided to scrap the habu shawl, and was immediately approached by the intended giftee. "I've decided to stay!" she said, probably expecting me to be excited. Instead the exhausted/relieved exclamation of "Good, you don't need my damned shawl!" actually flew from my lips. I think I have to make her one now, anyway.

After this experience I thought back to the last shawl I started, which is now officially a UFO as it hasn't been touched recently enough to qualify as a WIP. I realized that I have quite a few project bags taking up valuable space. So, I decided this summer I am going to clear a few of those bags out.

I started with this hemp market bag. I began work on this many months ago when I needed a mindless project to take along to some event. I loved the idea of it, and couldn't wait to use it. After about a week of attention it sat by my bed in a tote.

Well, it became my first UFO turned FO! Not a major accomplishment, but it's one less UFO.

I have also been trying to get some work done on the sand afghan on a regular basis. It's now almost 50% complete. However, this is one project that I don't mind having sit around for a while. I really love working on it in bursts. It gets boring, and I put it away. After a while I really do get excited to work on it again. Not many projects are able to renew my interests after sitting around for a while.

So, even with out constant attention I know it will be finished some day. Now if I could just get back to those shawls....

Another month has passed.....

2009-06-13T23:11:00.003-05:00

with out a post. I really wanted to be better about posting, but I really have been busy.

I mentioned in one of my last posts how I was going to be a vendor at the Squam Art Workshops. Well, I mostly blame that event for my not posting. I was spinning and dyeing my but off for an entire month. It really was a wonderful experience, though (both the event itself, and all the preparation), and I would do it again, but I'm glad I will have some down time before I have to.

Since I was spending so much time spinning, I finally decided to try many different things I had been meaning to try. I really feel like I am a much better spinner now than I was six weeks ago. At some point I will sort through pictures of different yarns and share them here. Right now I will show you a photo of the booth Lynne and I had there.

The table we ended up using was not the original one assigned to us. We were originally given a round table two spots away. Annie Modessit was originally supposed to be in this spot, but when she saw Lynne & me bringing in all of our stuff she suggested we switch so that our fiber could be spread out more for people to touch & feel. What a sweet woman she is!

Make sure to check out the view of Squam Lake from the windows behind the table. The setting was georgeous, and I definitely recommend checking out the workshops if you ever have the opportunity.

Now on to some of the projects I have been working on since my last post. I won't get to them all today.

Here is one of my favorite recent FO's. It's the Filigree Bowl by Linda Permann. I made it with Pisgah article 960 (size 5 crochet cotton) in faded denim. This was a super quick project I made in one afternoon. It needs a fabric stiffener to help it hold it's shape. Once dry it's a beautiful piece to display. I use it as a catch all for my keys & phone, and other items by my front door.

The Meredith Tote is the most recent of my yarn & pattern kits through Pisgah. I took this picture on a dock in Meredith Bay, and decided to name the bag after the location.

I think this will be a great bag for a day at the beach. It's lacy enough to allow air to get in to wet swim suits or towels, but solid enough to keep everything in it's place.

This sample was made by Debbie Carey in Ohio. Thanks Deb!

I had mentioned before that I was in the process of making several baby blankets. This one is my favorite so far. I'm calling it Madison, after it's recipient. The pattern is still with it's tester right now, but it should be ready for a kit soon.

I have one more project to share today, and it's not knitting, or crochet, it's sewn. For the longest time I have been wanting to update my bedspread. I've been using the same beige down comforter for years now, and I've really been longing for a change.

Here it is. There is nothing wrong with it. It's just old and blah. The problem is that I really love sleeping under it. It's light weight, but really warm, and I hate to get rid of a perfectly good down comforter just because I am bored with it.

Last night I decided to give it a make-over. I had stopped into the Fabric store to price a few different fabrics I had in mind. My original thought was dupioni silk. Unfortunately they didn't carry it in the colours I wanted. To get the colours I wanted I would have had to mix silk and polyester. That just feels wrong.

However, all 54" decorator fabrics were 50% off, and it was the last day of the sale. So, I decided to go with a sueded fabric that came in the perfect colours. The problem was I didn't have time to go home and take measurements. So, I had to guess on the yardage I would need.
I took a guess that I thought would give me plenty of fabric for the cover, and I hoped enough to make a couple of pillow shams.

Here is my bed right now. The front worked out exactly as I hoped. As for my guess on the yardage...

Well, I had to use every single bit of the fabric to make up the back of the back of the cover. Literally, I threw away only the tiny trimmings that resulted in squaring the edges of the pieces.

You can see the back just came together. There is even a tiny bit of the woven selvage of the fabric peeking through one of the blocks. However, I do love it, and may even have to go back and pay full price for a couple of pillow shams worth of fabric!

Babies & Aliens

2009-05-08T20:17:00.003-05:00

So, the cloud scarf is finished and gifted. It ended up being 80" long. It should be very warm for those Alaskan winters. No photos yet. I'm trying to keep my blogging momentum going, but I've got to be quick tonight. So, new projects only.

This blanket is the most recent kit I have with Pisgah Yarn . It's a baby blanket that I designed for one of my coworkers. I've called it Natalia, as Natalia was the woman having the baby, and the sample shown in the official photograph is this one made in shades of pink.

This sample was made by another woman I work with.

Natalia actually had a boy, Luan, and the blanket I made her was in blues. Unfortunately I never got a photo of that blanket when finished. I gifted the blanket to Natalia about a week before her due date, and that fell with in the month that I was without a camera.

I do have this in-progress photo of the blanket in blues.

This was a very quick and easy, but fun blanket to make, and I hope Natalia and Luan enjoy it.

Coincidentally, another coworker of mine is expecting a girl any day now, and I think she will be the recipient of Sandy's pink version of the blanket.

I have also made a blanket for the little girl, and although it has been gifted, I am not ready to share just yet. The Madison (I just LOVE that name) blanket is also a very fun project but not quite so easy. More details soon.

The Alien Bath Set is another new kit available through Pisgah.

Once again, this photo is not of my work, as my project was gifted during those camera deprived days. This set was crocheted by raveler eboousm. I'm not giving her real name, as she doesn't list it in her profile, and I never thought to ask if that was intentional. If she wishes to remain anonymous I will keep her secret.

This design actually stemmed from a gift I had made for my brother a long time ago. He had given me Debbie Stoller's The Happy Hooker as a gift, and I wanted to gift him in return with a project from the book.

I decided on the Skullholders. I loved the pattern but after making two skull panels, enough for one potholder, I decided I couldn't bear to make the third and the fourth (I bore easily, I guess). So, I decided to make up my own design for the second potholder.

I made this alien free style, but liked it enough that I really wanted to make some sort of pattern eventually. Looking at these potholders I would say my brother liked it, too. They are well worn.

It took me quite some time, but I think the towel/wash cloth set was a great use for the image.

I have lots of projects in the works right now, and one is actually for me. So, I promise to try to blog more frequently.

Tomorrow is the New Hampshire Sheep & Wool festival. I hope to not be too drunk with the smells of fiber to take photos.

How long has it been?

2009-05-05T09:14:00.005-05:00

I know it has been a small eternity since I have posted here. I had a very busy few months, and the short periods of time I had to be working on projects was sent working on gifts that could not go public anyway.

In the last few weeks I have had the opportunity to somethings purely for fun, and now I finally have some projects to show.

Here is an in progress shots of a gift that I had been working on for several weeks that is now gifted.

This is a comfort afghan for my friend Chris. I met Chris through the Peaches & Creme group on Ravelry. She is a wonderful person, and has become a good friend. She also does a great deal of my pattern testing for me.

Recently Chris has had a lot to deal with between being laid off, and trying to help her sick mother. When I decided to make a comfort afghan for her I contacted several people in the P&C group, and lots of squares were on the way. Group members sent me 22 of the 30 squares in this afghan. I edged each square then sewed them all together. Luckily my brother Gerry was visiting the night I was seaming this up, so I gave him a yarn needle, and he dove right in, too.

If you want a closer look at any of the squares I have a photo album here. Each square has the ravelry name of it's creator listed.

When the blanket was all done I decided to drive out to New Jersey and present it to Chris personally. She knew I was coming but didn't know why.

This is Chris in the office of the pet store she and her husband own, as she is seeing the afghan for the first time.

We had a wonderful day together, and although we had never met face to face before, it was just like we had been friends for years.

During that same time I was host to two delightful stuffed pigs. Another P&C ravelry group project. These pigs are traveling the country visiting many of the group members.

There is an online scrapbook of their travels here.

The Little piggies spent the day with us, as did Wonder Woman (the stuffed toy I had made for Chris this past Christmas). Here they are at the sign marking the community where Chris lives, and gets her ravelry name from.

I have also managed to find the time to do quite a bit of spinning in the last two weeks. My favorite yarn of late is this thick/thin spiral yarn I created to mimic the look of fluffy white clouds.

I wish I had photographed it before I wound it into a ball, but you can still get a sense of the texture.

This yarn is being made into a scarf for a co-worker that is getting ready to move to Alaska. I figured if ever there was an occasion for a fuzzy warm hand spun scarf, this is it!

Here is the fabric of the scarf. Can you see the clouds?

It's actually been an amazingly quick project- which it had to be because I didn't realize she is leaving at the end of the week.

I spun and plies the yarn on Saturday, and Sunday. I washed it and set the twist late Sunday night, and started the knitting last night. With size 11 needles it has grown to 4' in length in just a few hours.

The last bit of news I am going to share today is kind of exciting to me. I am going to be a vendor at the Squam Lake Art Workshops. This is a five day artists retreat about an hours drive north of me. On Saturday night they are having a vendor fair and ravelry party. So, it will be a very fun event. I plan to sell several different items, including hand spun yarn, and hand painted rovings. Here's a bit of a preview. These two merino braids are my favorites from a dying adventure I had last week.

My friend Lynne will be sharing the booth with me, and we plan to get together for more dyeing next week. Lynne creates Beautiful colourways, and spins beautifully. Check out her etsy store.

Some New Patterns

2009-03-10T13:42:00.004-05:00

It appears that I may be on a blogging roll all of a sudden. Or, perhaps I am just making up for a long absence. What ever the case, I have a few new projects to share today.

The first is this pair of scarves. My friends Chris and Lisa were gracious enough to model them for me last night (it was a bizarre coincidence that I had the scarves and my camera when I ran into them).

These scarves will be available as a kit through the Pisgah website soon. They are both made with new colours from the Peaches & Creme Premium line.

These were designed to be easy projects for newbie crocheters. I have a few online friends like Melanie, and Aly that have been trying to learn crochet. I figured it would be great to have a pattern that would be easy for them, and others that are learning, that actually produces a nice wearable project.

It's a bit late in the year for new scarves. However, it snowed here yesterday. So, a new scarf didn't seem totally outrageous. The colours may show up a bit better in this photo, since it was still day time when I took it. The scarf on the left is made in OD Spice, and is a single crochet pattern worked from end to end. The scarf on the right is made in Dark Purple Ombre, uses a similar pattern in half double crochet, but is worked from side to side.

I also have this new dishcloth design almost ready to go.

I call it the Quick & Lacey Round. This is made with the Cotton Cabled, and will be a free pattern. I actually made this months ago, but I sent it along to a pattern tester along with a pile of other stuff, and it got lost in the shuffle. I'm glad it has surfaced, because I really like it. I can make at least two or three of these in an hour. It is on the small side ( about 7" across) but, I figure it will come in handy for last minute gift additions.

The last thing I have today is this little amagarumi style crochet hook holder. I had been looking for small cylindrical containers to keep a few tools handy, but didn't find anything I liked. So, over the weekend a simple gauge swatch turned into this.

This little cylinder uses only half an ounce of yarn, but will easily hold a dozen or more hooks. I plan on making a few more to keep in various places, so I will always have a hook handy.

I will also write up a pattern for this (although it's so easy I almost feel silly doing it), and offer it for free if anyone is interested.

Hello Again.

2009-03-07T20:06:00.003-05:00

It's been so long since I have blogged that I almost forgot I have a blog. There were a few reasons for this. February was really busy; so busy I can't believe it has already come and gone. I did almost no knitting or crocheting for the entire month. I was also with out a camera, and if I had done anything I would not have been able to document it here.

Well, now it's March, and I seem to be finding a little time to spend with my fibers, and I have a brand new camera.

Even so, I don't have a lot to show you today.

Last week I bought Jan Eaton's 100 Crochet Blocks for Afghans, Blankets, and Throws. It's a great book, and I have been having a lot of fun playing with the squares patterns in different colour combinations. I have yet to get an actual project underway with the squares, but I will show you a couple of my favorites.

The first one is called Willow. I made it in Peaches & Creme in burgundy, sage, and camel.

The next one is called Fudge. Jan's pattern calls for 5 colours, but I cut it down to 4. This one had many more ends to weave in than I would usually care to deal with, but I really like the look of it. Not sure if I could handle an entire afghan's worth of these, though.

I've also managed to get a little spinning in this week. It had been months since I had used my wheel. I missed it terribly, but I finally spent an entire evening spinning.

I did a few mini-skeins blending odds and ends of singles left over for other projects, with a few fun results. None with yardage enough for even a small project, though.

Then, when I had a few empty bobbins I spun up two bobbins of a sky blue merino/silk blend that has been sitting in my stash since April, and a partial bobbin of hand painted silk hankies. I made two hanks of yarn, one two-ply blue merino silk, and the other a three ply, adding in the hand painted silk.

There is a total of about 300 yards of sport weight yarn. My plan is to use it for socks, with the 3-ply being used for the toes and heels. I promised Deb I would work on a simple pattern with an after-thought heel, so maybe I will use it for that.

I hope to get to work on some new projects vey soon. So, I hope to have more exciting blog entries in the not so distant future.

Some Socks

2009-01-18T11:52:00.002-05:00

I've been on another sock knitting kick for the past 8 or 9 days. It started because I had a skein of Mountain Colors Bear Foot that I had been dying to use, and I finally decided it was time.

Unfortunately I am just not too thrilled with the resulting socks. The yarn label called for a gauge of 5-6 sts/inch on size 3 or 4 needles. So I knit the yarn up at 6 sts/inch on size 3 needles, and I really feel that the resulting fabric is just too loose for socks.

I was also not so thrilled with the pattern I used. It was Cat Bordhi's Jeweled Steps from New Pathways. This is a sock made with her sidestream architecture. The shaping is actually rather cool, with the arch expansion worked across the inside of the foot. It's the Jewel part that I didn't care for. The pattern is supposed to highlight the colour changes in hand painted yarns, and it uses groups of 3 stitches wrapped 2x with the yarn before being knit. It seemed to me that while doing this if I wrapped the stitches too tight they were pushed together leaving little holes around them, and if I wrapped them too loosely the surrounding stitches pulled up the slack, and caused little holes. There did seems to be a happy medium in there, but it was so difficult to attain that I would never bother to try again.

These socks also represent the 2nd time Cat's master numbers did not work out, and created socks that were way too long for my foot. I checked and rechecked my numbers, and I do not understand why it didn't work out, when it has so many other times. The last time this happened I frogged and forgot about socks for a bit- this time I restarted the sock several times, until I got it right.

There were two good things that came out of making these socks:

I taught myself the magic loop while making them, and I really liked it (I thought I would hate it)
I've discovered that this is the warmest sock yarn ever, and I must go get more to knit up on smaller needles.
When I finished up that pair of socks I decided I wanted to try a pair with an after thought heel. This pair is made with Lion Brand Fisherman's wool that I dyed with Kool Aid a long time ago.

Again worked at 6 sts/inch on size 3 needles with the magic loop. I'm not following a pattern of any kind for these, I'm just winging it. The after thought heel really does seem to make the sock move more quickly, and I think if I had to supply an active family with all of their socks I would definitely use this method all the time. However, they look totally bizarre when they are not being worn.

Since they were only intended to be an exercise I didn't really pay attention to gauge or size until the first sock was done, and I decided I like it a lot. Now I wish I had made them a bit larger, but as you can see they will stretch just enough to fit my feet.

Hello 2009!

2009-01-07T11:04:00.002-05:00

Many people seem to think that the way you bring in the new year will be reflected in your entire year. I hope that is not true, because 2009 started as I was in the middle of a state if disorganization, and procrastination. I worked late, rushed to get home at 11:45, changed my clothes, realized I never did pick up that bottle of champagne to bring to my neighbor's party.... and then it was midnight. Actually, I've never thought of New Year's Eve as a big party holiday, anyway.
I haven't been blogging because my camera was forgotten at my sister's house on Christmas day. Also, in the days leading up to Christmas I was so busy that I completely forgot to photograph all of my FOs before gifting them. I was completely irritated with myself for that.
The last photo of the granny square afghan was a pretty good representation of the finished product. It weighs almost 5 pounds, and my mother loves it.
The thrummed mittens, however looked so much better complete and with the ends all woven in. I am most disappointed that I didn't get a shot of them. I will try next time I am at my sister's house.
Speaking of Christmas, I hope you all had a wonderful one. I had a very nice one, which included a very long nap in the middle of the day. I usually torture myself and go the whole day on about 2 hours sleep. It was nice to skip that tradition.
I received a very nice gift from my brother of this yard-sale yarn.

It's 20 balls, 1000grams total, of an aran yarn from Ireland.

I tried to get a photo that would enable you to read the label, but it seemed like no matter what angle I used there was some sort of glare. What that says under Aran is: made in Ireland specially for P. Quill, Ballingeary, Co. Cork, Ireland.

The only other information on the label is the fiber content (wool) and colour, and lot number, along with some product care/cleaning symbols.

I have no idea of the yardage, but that's easy enough to find out. I'll just wrap a ball around my niddy noddy. I have also started a swatch, but at 4 stitches to the inch the fabric seems really dense and stiff. I have decided I will have to make a few swatches at different stitch counts, then wash them all to see what I like best.

Since Christmas I have managed to whip out a few more quick projects. Some were gifted before I got the camera back. Once was actually for me, so I can share:

I made these felted slippers because I wore a whole in the ones I made last year. I decided I'd better use something a little more sturdy and thick this time. So, these are lite lopi double stranded. I just used a basic cuff down/heel flap sock construction. They were worked on size 11 needles, and would have been finished in one evening, but the lopi started to irritate my skin. In order to save my hands I knit them over two evenings.

I love the way Lopi softens up after felting (or even a tiny bit of fulling). These do need to be shrunk down a bit more, but I've been wearing them anyway. They are so warm!

I have also started 3 new baby blankets this week. Two are more than half done. I'm not sure if I am excited or relieved about that. I have decided to design all three of these, so I will wait until they are more complete to share pictures.

I do have one Christmas project picture to share today. Remember that doll? Well, here it is:

This doll was a gift for my friend Chris, who is known lovingly on the ravelry Peaches & Creme group as Wonderwoman. Chris (sorry non-ravelrars she has no blog) is such a wonderful and supportive friend, and does many of my crochet pattern testing. This summer when another one of my pattern testers was unable to complete a project when I needed it I emailed Chris at the last minute asking her to test the pattern that very day! She did, and enabled us to confidently print up the patterns for the Peaches & Creme workshops on time.

That was when the idea for this doll was born. I had to do something to thank her for that. If you notice her current ravitar I think it is fair to say she likes it.

The doll and her outfit are completely free styled. I first made two little tubes for legs, then joined the tops to form the crotch, then I added on the red shoe-tips. I knit up from the joined legs pretty much in the style of a seamless raglan sweater, made a long-ish neck, then doubled the stitches to work the head.

The hair is some eyelash yarn that was dug from the bottom of my stash. The hair just cracks me up! The outfit, which was originally intended to be much different, was made out of rayon chenille, and rayon crochet filament. The rayon filament- while it is wonderfully shiny and golden had to be multi-stranded to knit up at a sport weight gauge to match the chenille, and it became a bit too stiff to work with the fair-isle vision in my head. So, I crocheted a little birdlike shape over the knitting instead! It wasn't exactly what I envisioned, but I was pretty happy with the outcome.

I'm Stitching as Fast as I Can....

2008-12-20T12:36:00.004-05:00

As I have mentioned before, I have broken my personal rule: No handmade gifts for the holidays. Now with less than a week to go I feel much less stressed than I expected about the whole thing.

If you had asked me about it last Monday I may have had something very different to say. That was the day I decided to frog the afghan I had started for my mother. Well, here's the new one. A simple granny square made in Peaches & Creme double worsted. That's a ruler in the center. It's about 52" across right now. I plan to work another 3 or 4 rounds (5"-6"), and call it done.

The yarn and colours are the same as the ripple afghan I had started and didn't like. I had decided on them after giving her the Shell Edged Kitchen Set, and deciding that the colours were okay in her kitchen, but PERFECT in her living room.

I got to hooking on this as soon as I ripped out the previous blanket Monday afternoon, by Monday night I realized I was not going to have enough yarn. THANK GOODNESS I am well liked by the Flo over at the Pisgah factory, who put me on hold while she ran around to find yarn in the same dyelots! The new batch of yarn came in yesterday, so I was able to resume my frantic hooking. Now the only problem is whether or not the blanket will weigh more than my mom. It's currently about 4 pounds, but feels much heavier!

Another gift that I need to finish this weekend (so I can priority mail it Monday) is this doll. This had been in the back of my mind forever, then a few rounds hanging off the needles for almost as long, but I have finally gotten in gear with it. I have completely winged this one with no real advanced planning except the image in my mind. I'm pretty pleased with the body, but am frogging the first attempt at an outfit, as I need to make the clothes much smaller than I thought.

No more details on this one until it's gifted....

The thrummed mittens are nearly complete. I'll post pictures in the next post.

I've even started something for myself this week. Last weekend we had a full house here, as we were the only people out of the NH family to have electricity (in case you hadn't heard a major ice storm left 100's of thousand's of people with out power in NH- aka most of the state) and all of the WIPs I had on hand were being gifted to a person that was present. So, I pulled out my camel-merino-silk hand spun and started this neck warmer. The perspective in the photo is a bit off -the neckwarmer is larger than the ball of yarn. It's just a ring of 2x1 ribbing, but it's super soft and luxurious feeling, and I can't wait to wear it. I wish it had been ready for the 8" of snow I woke up to today!

Long post- knitting at the end

2008-12-08T21:02:00.007-05:00

Although this blog is usually about knitting or other crafts I'm going to talk a bit about food today. This post is coming at the request of a friend who, when calling and asking "what are you up to?" was a little surprised to get the answer, "I'm making cheese."

First a little background, since it is the stuff I find interesting:

This past summer while taking the road trip down to Pisgah Yarn & Dying, Gerry introduced me to Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. The book is the 1 year chronicle of an American family trying to eat only local foods. The book also talks about reducing your carbon footprint by using less fossil fuels to obtain your food.

Before this book I never thought about how much oil was being burned up by industrial farming, and shipping foods around the world so that fresh vegetables are always on hand, no matter what the season. I'll tell you, I can not stop thinking about it now. It's not that I never plan to eat a pineapple again, because it has to be shipped from Hawaii, but I do plan to make my food purchases more thoughtfully, and support local, and organic agriculture much more purposefully than ever before.

So, I found a local farm to put me on their weekly customer list, and I now have a gallon of milk to pick up from them each Monday. I made the arrangements for this last Tuesday, and after I had arranged to buy a gallon of milk each week I realized that I consume just under a quart.

In the book, Barbara had talked about "The Cheese Queen" Rikki Carroll, who started New England Cheese Making Supply Company, which is located in Western, MA. I had thought about trying to sign up for her one day cheese making class, then realized she sold it on DVD. I decided to go that route, but with so much milk coming my way so quickly I went out to buy her book immediately. AS it turns out, I can not obtain vegetable rennet locally, so I will have to order it. In the mean time I am making this simple soft cheese with this weeks excess milk.

The milk is slowly brought to a boil. Cultured buttermilk is added to the hot fresh milk, and curds develop.

The whey is strained off from the curds, at this point you have cottage cheese. You can keep it this way, or hang it to continue to strain for a more firm, solid cheese. That's what I did, I actually weighted/pressed it for a couple of hours.

My finished cheese is somewhere between the consistency of a very firm ricotta, and a soft creme cheese. Now it's chilling to be made into an entree tomorrow.

While I was making the cheese I also made some seitan. For the carnivores- That's isolated wheat protein (gluten), and makes a great vegetarian entree. The wheat was not local, but buying dry powder certainly does save on fuel over shipping a high-water-content food that needs refridgeration.

The seitan starts with a box of "vital wheat gluten" marketed as a product used in bread making (although you could isolate the gluten from plain old flour). A little water added makes this into a big rubbery ball of dough. The dough is kneaded then allowed to rest for a bit, and finally simmered for an hour.

When the dough first goes into the pot it doesn't really look like much, just a couple puny blobs, but it puffs up quick. Halfway through cooking I thought my seitan was going to blow the lid off the pot.

Again, this is now being chilled for meals later in the week. Mondays are the only day that I can really get into complex cooking in the evening, so it's nice to get ready for the week ahead.

Okay, and just so the people who read this blog regularly have something they will be interested in:

I have a mitten from the 2nd set of thrummed mittens nearly completed. I had started this before I got Maureen's advice to keep the thrumms really puffy, and did make them much smaller. As it turns out I can already tell the set with the enourmously pouffy thrumms will be superior. Live and learn.

The second mitten from the first pair is almost done, but I have run out of blue roving, and will have to dye some more. I had hoped to do that today, but the days are just too short this time of year. Maybe tomorrow....

Evolution

2008-11-26T15:07:00.003-05:00

So, the Desert Raglan became the Desert Seamless Set-in Sleeve Sweater at the last possible minute. The Pattern is from Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting workshop, and is the same as all of her other seamless sweaters, until the body and sleeve joining.

It is finished, and drying right now. Since I haven't seen the Sun all week I gave up on trying to get a better photo than this, but perhaps soon.

Speaking of projects that change directions at the last possible minute (or at least long after they have started) I found new inspiration for an old project. I made many squares out of Classic Elite Sand- an aran weight cotton boucle- a long time ago, and had planned to someday make more, and eventually join them to make a blanket.

All of the squares had been knit from the center out, and I left all the edge stitches live, as I thought that I may want to use a 3 needle bind off, or even the kitchener stitch to join them. I have decided instead to join them with decreasing squares.

I have just started the first one, but I do like the way it is turning out. I shouldn't spend much time on this, as I have holiday knitting to get to, and even after the holidays it will not be main focus, but I do at least feel as if this blanket has finally found it's direction, and will some day be finished.

I also have the first of the thrummed mittens nearly complete. I think I have made my thrums too thick. Can you see how puffed up this mitten looks? I know that the fleece will felt and matt itself down as the mittens are worn, but I think there still may be too much of it here. I think I will make the next one with thinner thrums, and then decide what to do about this one.

Little Bits of Progress

2008-11-19T11:52:00.002-05:00

It seems that my knitting time has been nearly non-existent for the past few weeks, and to top it off I [have gone completely insane and] decided to break my personal rule of NO Hand knitted Holiday Gifts this year. So, I have a whole bunch of knitted and crocheted items in various states of progress. A whole bunch of items that, 6 weeks from now, I will be ripping my hair out over! Here's one of them:

I have started the thrummed mittens for my nieces. I have to say that they are slow moving, but really fun to work on. I am very excited at the thought of how wonderful the finished item will be.

I am using the basic mitten pattern from Ann Budd's Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns, and Adrian Bizila's "How I do thrums" tutorial from Hello Yarn.

I know I am going to need a pair of these for myself....someday!

There are several other gifts that I can't share right now. I did however make some quickie dishcloth gifts that I can share. The honeycomb looking cloth is Hakucho's Circle Cloth made in Peaches & Creme burgundy, and light sage. I wasn't sure about the colour combination when I first started, but I really liked the way it turned out.

The other cloth is my own Crocheted Ridges Cloth. Instead of using the Peaches & Creme yarn I designed the cloth for I used the Country Cabled Cotton. It's a lighter weight yarn, but I worked it at the same gauge, and I just love the results. The picture does not show it as clearly as I would like, but the cloth has almost a lacy look to it. Very different than my previous version, and I have a renewed interest in the stitch pattern.

I have made some progress on the Desert raglan. It is not in a great state to be photographed right now, so it will have to wait. However, I will be starting the shoulder shaping today and I'm thinking I may not make it a raglan after all. More on that soon, I hope!

In the design world I have much going on, but very little to report. A new free knitted bookmark pattern has been posted at the Pisgah website. The Garden Trellis bookmark has two simple variations. It a quick, fun knit. This pattern has actually been around forever, and was almost forgotten about until recently. So, it is here just in time for quick holiday gift additions. If you are giving any books for holiday gifts think of one of these bookmarks made in Dazzling Diamonds as a way to add a little glitz to the presentation!

2008-11-04T12:53:00.002-05:00

So, it seems like I am over-due for a blog post, but really I haven't had much to talk about. There has not been much time for knitting the past few weeks.

I have slowly been working on the roll-edged raglan. I was concerned about the different types of stripes on the sleeves and body. Here's a picture of the two side by side, and I like it. The worries are gone.

I did have a couple evenings last week when I stayed over a friends house, and I knew I would have a little time to actually concentrate on my knitting there. [She had just had surgery, and I was staying there in case she needed anything in the middle of the night.] So, I pulled out my mother's shawl that I haven't touched in months.

If you have forgotten about it entirely you can find some earlier information here.

I have it stretched over my red fiber scale here, and you can begin to see the pattern emerging. So, it's not looking so much like a hair net anymore. I had originally planned to knit this to 4' square, and then add a wide border to make it 5' square. I'm now thinking that will make it too large for my mother, who is not quite 5' tall. I may have to get out the calculator and re-think this one!

I also have a new plan in the works. I'm thinking I will make my nieces some thrummed mittens with the yarn I dyed with the berries they picked for me. I almost started a pair last night, but realized I wanted some roving in bright colours to use for the thrums.

So, the roving is steaming up now! Perhaps this weekend I will get to a pair.

Camel/silk/merino Handspun

2008-10-24T08:46:00.006-05:00

Several people have asked to see the yarn that came out of the batts I made with Lynne. Of course, I couldn't wait to spin it, even though it meant no time to knit this week.

The yarn is super soft, and the silk adds a subtle sheen. It truly is luxurious.

There is about 250 yards of sport weight yarn. I do still have about 50 grams of fiber in waiting, but probably won't get to spin it for another week.

I do have a project in mind, but I am still deciding whether or not I want to find a pattern, or wing it. I'll keep everyone posted.

Rhinebeck

2008-10-21T08:58:00.003-05:00

It was a beautiful weekend for a sheep & wool festival. The air was chilly, and perfect for woolen sweaters, and there was just enough colour left in the trees to make it truly beautiful.

Lynne and I got to the festival shortly after noon, and it was packed! It was so packed I felt like I couldn't even see what some of the booths had to offer. However, I managed to do just fine with the shopping.

Lynne, who just purchased a drum carder ended up with a beautiful 7.5Lb Romney fleece. Check out her blog for photos of how wonderful this stuff is after washing. I can't wait to see what she does with it! With the amount she has I'm sure there will be many great projects.

The ravelry party that evening was cold, but great fun! I even won a door-prize, a Classic Elite sock kit.

The highlight of the ravelry party for me, however, was talking to Author Doris Chan. I actually approached her, having no idea who she was, to ask if I could watch her work on the broomstick lace she was hooking away at. She was so sweet, and immediately turned to give me a better view while explaining everything she did. It was not until the end of our chat/lesson that we even exchanged names. I was so amazed that I had just gotten a lesson from a famous designer! If you are not familiar with her work you should really check it out. Her Blue Curacao Shawl is one of my favorite crochet designs ever.

The next day I couldn't resist going to see her at the Festival, and getting a copy of Amazing Crochet Lace autographed.

Sunday was especially nice at the festival. Things had calmed down, and were less crowded. You actually noticed when you were near someone you know, and could look about the booths with out fear of being swept away in a wave of desperate fiber hunters. We had done most of our shopping on Saturday, but did wander about, and double back to vendors where we had spent less time than we wanted. We made it a short day, though, and managed to drive into Massachusetts just as the setting sun was beginning to cast a golden glow over the Berkshires. It was a beautiful drive.

Here is my fiber haul from the festival. Not as ridiculous as I feared it would be.
In the back there is 1/2Lb of black and red merino/mohair roving, moving clockwise- 1.5 Lbs of superfine merino top (If I had even realized how wonderful this top is, and what a STEAL I was getting it would have been much more) 4oz of baby camel, 2oz of white yak, and 1/2Lb of dark grey Icelandic roving.

When we arrived at Lynne's house she helped me use her new drum carder to create my own luxury batts. A few ounces of merino, an ounce of camel, and a bit of tussah silk (that just happened to be in my car), and I got these wonderful creamy vanilla coloured batts. They are so exquisite!

Finished (Again)

2008-10-17T10:13:00.003-05:00

The Saddle shoulder sweater is truly finished now. I'm quite glad that I took the time to re-work the bottom of the body. It fits better than I had hoped it would.

The irony of the whole situation was that my original plan was to make this sweater from Barbara Walker's top down pattern. I changed my mind at the last minute. I think the knitting gods were having a bit of fun with me.

For all of you who gasped and got dizzy when you saw that I cut the sweater I want you to know how not horrifying it was. I only snipped 1 stitch and then carefully unraveled it around. Knitting doesn't naturally unravel this way. So, it actually took a bit of work, and as long as each unraveled stitch is secured on a needle as it is freed, there was no danger of the whole sweater coming apart. I never dropped a single stitch in this process, and now I have a sweater that fits, as opposed to one that needed to find a fitee.

The weather in New York is supposed to be quite cool tomorrow. I think this sweater will make it's public debut at Rhinebeck. In case it is very cool (and I'm thinking the night time, out door ravelry party may be) I have packed some complimentary accessories, including a grey scarf knit for me by Joansie (since I received that in April this will also be the scarf's public debut).

This week has been an extremely busy one, and for several days now I have barely had time to knit a stitch. However, during class, and my class reading I have been swatching for my next sweater with the Classic Elite Desert that I picked up at the Hub Mills Store recently.

This sweater will be a simple rolled edge raglan. Once again, I will be using the EPS. The swatch turned out to be the perfect size for a sleeve, so I went with that (ignoring recent advice to wash my swatches. I know I should!) The thick & thin yarn makes for a very bumpy swatch. If you look at it closely, it looks like the fabric has hives. I'm sure this will be tamed a bit with washing and blocking. I would know this for sure if I followed the advice of more experienced knitters.

I have to say that this is the first time I have used a Classic Elite yarn that I have not immediately fallen in love. Since it is a loosely spun, un-plied yarn it is easy to split a stitch -especially when you are reading instead of watching what you are doing. I do, however, love the way the yarn is striping, and the colour combination is one I would have chosen if I had dyed the yarn myself. So, over all, I am still quite pleased.

I hope everyone has a great weekend! I know I plan to. I'll see about getting some shots of the sweater in action at Rhinebeck to post on Monday.

I thought it was finished

2008-10-11T22:48:00.003-05:00

So, I finished the saddle shouldered sweater, and blocked it, but decided it really is too short. It fits, just not the way I want it to.

I thought about giving it away to someone that would like it as is, but I decided I really like it too much. I made it for myself, and I want to wear it.
So, I took my scissors to it.

One stitch snipped, and an hour of careful unraveling, and I had the bottom border removed.

Now the sweater is back on the needles, and I'm knitting down instead of up. I'll add a couple of inches, then rework the border.

Spinning at the Fryeburg fair was a lot of fun. I got to meet several other spinners, some of whom had decades of experience. I got some tips on spinning bulky yarns. which I have had trouble making with a consistent width. So, I have been spinning like crazy, practicing my bulky yarns.

One of the resulting yarns I loved so much I had to work it up immediately. I used it to make this over-sized cap that covers most of my head and half of the back of my neck. It will be perfect for shoveling snow (I hope to do much less of that this year), as I always ended up with a spot on the back of my neck too high to be covered by my scarf, but too low for my hat.
There are actually several new projects in the works. Those that are not Christmas presents may make an appearance soon.

The EPS Seamless Saddle Shouldered Sweater.

2008-09-30T13:38:00.003-05:00

So, here is the project I have been promising to share.

It's Elizabeth Zimmerman's Seamless Saddle Shouldered Sweater using the EPS (Elizabeth Percentage system). I'm knitting it with Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Worsted, and using my own handspun for accents.

I was hoping two weeks would be enough time to finish it, but there have been a few days that I have been too busy to even knit a stitch!

Right now I am just about to start the shoulder decreases. The cuffs are done in linen stitch, but I may switch to ribbing for the neck, as linen stitch may be too stiff. I'll decide when I get there.

Right now I fear that the sweater body isn't going to be nearly long enough, but if I remember correctly from the similarly constructed Cobblestone pullover I had the same fear, and it worked out just fine.

Woolly dreams

2008-09-28T09:42:00.005-05:00

I thought I would take a minute to tell everyone about my crochet class in Billerica, and my exciting new fiber related plans.

Yesterday was a yucky rainy day here in the North-East. Since Billerica, Ma is over an hour drive in the best weather I figured I'd better leave extra early. I had hoped to stop at the Hub Mills Store. I did manage to make it to MA with enough time to stop in Lowell, and was I glad I did!

For quite some time I've been dreaming of a simple roll necked sweater made out of Classic Elite's self striping, thick and thin wool -Desert. I believe it's discontinued, but they have had a large stock of unlabeled balls in the outlet for some time now. I finally decided I was going to have to go and buy the yarn before they ran out (after all the roll neck sweater will fit perfectly in line with my mindless homework knitting). Well, in honor of Lowell's city wide Open Studio weekend all yarn at the store was an additional 20% off! Good things really do come to those who wait!

So, here it is. Hopefully it will be a sweater in time for a cold New England winter.

The class ended up being only three people. Somehow a few were lost through the week. However, it did move along quite nicely with so few to keep track of. Usually for a beginner class I feel that everyone should leave with enough knowledge to make a square or rectangular project in single crochet (a basic scarf or dishcloth). Then if I can move on to other stitches it is a bonus. Well with these three woman we went through the foundation, the single crochet stitch, the half double, and double crochet stitches, and actually got into making a granny square. I was amazed! Unfortunately we only got half way through the 2nd round of the granny square before I had to leave, but the fact that we were even able to start it amazes me.

I was threatened with the possibility of frustrated crocheters showing up on my doorstep for further instruction, but luckily I live quite a distance away! I may return for another class with these ladies at some point this winter.

After the class I went back to Lowell, and the last 40 minutes of open studio for the day. Of course that really isn't time to see much, but I spent it at my friend Lynne's studio, where there are always lots of fun fiber junkies hanging out. It had been way too long since I had gotten to see Lynne, and we had plans for Mexican food and Margaritas after open studio closed for the day. Somehow it came up that Lynne was going to Rhinebeck. Months ago she told me she planned to skip it this year. Before I even got to ask what changed her mind she said "Do you want to come!?" I thought about it briefly and said "Well, I'm back in school, and I've been so busy. I really shouldn't, but of course I will!" I did come home and double check my school schedule, but it turns out to be the perfect weekend for me to take off. I'm very excited to go, and I'm hoping to meet lots of my online fiber friends. I've already told Maureen that we have to meet if she will be there.

No picture today of my current WIP- the weather is just too gross to get a picture that really captures the colour. Soon, I promise.

The Natural Dye Experiment

2008-09-24T13:33:00.003-05:00

On Monday night I stopped at my sister's house to pick some pants to hem for my niece. When I got there I was told that the girls had gotten something for me. They slipped outside and came back in with this:

A bag of wild berries they had picked with the thought that I could use for dying yarn.

I had honestly never really considered dying yarn with wild berries. It seemed like a very tedious and messy idea to me. However, after being presented with such a gift from my nieces I figured I had better give it a shot.

I did a bit of online research, and the information available for using berries as dye was a bit sketchy, and described a fairly lengthy process, including days of soaking the berries to make a liquor before preparing a dye bath. I didn't want to spend that sort of time on it. So, I improvised:

First I mashed the berries, then I put them in my dye pot, added water, and boiled them for about 1/2 hour.

When I felt as if I had drawn out enough of the colour I strained away all of the berry pulp. You can see that I was correct in believing this would be a messy venture.

The strained liquid went back into the dye pot with some vinegar. There is probably a better mordant for dying with berries, but I don't know what it is, so I stuck with what I know.

My natural coloured wool went into the dye bath, and simmered for about 40 minutes. I have to say that for the first 10-20 minutes I didn't really believe that anything attractive would come out of this dye bath.

In the end, I really did get a very pretty yarn in a vivid pink colour. I do find myself wondering what sort of rich purple I may have gotten if I had pre-soaked the berries, and allowed the wool to soak longer (I did this all in about 2 hours). However, I think I am done with the berry dying for 2008.

In the knitting world I have discovered that a simple project worked in the round is a great way to keep myself from fidgiting while doing my homework, and helps me get more reading done in a single sitting. Becuase of this, I do have a new project that I will be sharing soon.

Tragedy Strikes!

2008-09-16T10:29:00.004-05:00

One of my Denise needle tips snapped mid-row! I can't believe it, I have never broken a needle before (well, I have broken size 1 bamboo needles when I stepped on them, but that doesn't count). I guess trying to pinch stitches with this firm cotton yarn was a bit too much for the plastic. I have already picked up a metal needle and started to insert it in place. Luckily the project hasn't unraveled too far.

So, I really seem to be slacking with blog posts these days, and the truth is the amount of things I have to talk about really has declined. I am a college student once again, and that's cutting into the knitting time a bit. Also, A severe bout of knitting ADD has kept me from making too much progress on any one piece.

These socks are the socks that were completed on my road trip in August. They hadn't been photographed before because I had misplaced 1 as soon as I got home. It finally resurfaced this weekend.

These are the Woven Ridgeline socks from Cat Bordhi's New Pathways book. I altered the pattern by using her garter toe from the same book. It doesn't show up well in the photo, but the front of the sock has a panel of linen stitch.

The socks are made with Trekking ProNatura, and when I starting them I really didn't like the yarn, but by the 2nd sock I was growing accustomed to it, and I am so glad I persevered. I love the feel of these socks!

As for the sock I showed in the works in the last post, it's gone for a swim in the frog pond! The pattern made a sock much too long for my foot. Although I could have ripped back to the toe and adjusted it I just wasn't liking it enough.

Just to show you I am knitting something these days, this is my current mindless project, for times when I really want to focus on something else. It's a hemp market bag. I bought a kit for this bad forever ago, and it has sat in my stash. I recently gave away the crocheted market bag I had been using. So, I needed something new. When I pulled out the kit I decided I really didn't like the pattern it came with, so I am just winging this one.

Another thing I have been managing to find time for is spinning. It felt like I hadn't done it in forever. Honestly, it was partially a time issue, but I was also pretty bored with spinning that grey gotland lace weight (which I still need to spin more of).

Well, a couple of weeks ago I went up to Vermont to see Joansie, and attend the VT Sheep & Wool festival with her.

There is nothing like a S&W festival to get the desire to spin back! There were so many fun fibers there. One vendor (and I am sorry to say I forgot to take note of who) had blended rovings they had made from the left over bits they had after carding their first quality rovings. These scrap blends were merino, silk, alpaca, and mohair, and were $0.99 an ounce. They had 2 big bags, and although the colours weren't ones I would normally choose, I had to buy a little.

I got a red/yellow/purple striped roving which I used to spin up a very fun, very textural thick & thin bulky yarn. The 6 ounces made about 400 yards. It somehow made me think of my niece Ella as I was working with it, so the yarn will be worked into a gift for her.

The other yarn in the photo was made from roving that was a gift from my friend Deb. I think the colour was called "Prairie grass" It was another striped roving with 3 different greens and tan. Again I made a very textural yarn with this. This one is approximately aran weight, and I want to use it for a project for myself. I have about 300 yards here, and another 2 ounces of fiber to spin.

Oh, and because I love Halloween, I have a new free crochet pattern on the Pisgah website.

The Halloween Ghost cloth is a quick and easy project. I had fun making this one.

I also want to thank Norma for testing the pattern for me. If you are a cloth knitter or crocheter check out her website Dish and Wash Cloth Mania for a great free pattern directory.

For those of you who live in the Northeast, come and see me:

I will be teaching a free beginner crochet classes at the Billerica Public Library on Saturday September 27, from 1 to 4. There is a cap on the class. So, if you are in the area, and want to attend let me know!

I will also be a demonstrator in the Fiber House at the Fryeburg Fair in Maine, on Thursday October 2 from 2 to 5. This is the Men's day at the fiber house.

I've Returned

2008-08-26T12:26:00.004-05:00

I've actually been home for over a week, but I don't know where the time has gone.

The trip was great fun. I only wish it could have lasted longer!

Gerry, and Ian (my nephew/Gerry's son) and I decided at the last minute to head out on Saturday night instead of getting up before the sun to head out on Sunday. It was a good thing we did, because after stopping from 3 to 9am to sleep/shower/eat we still did not arrive in Old Fort until 1 am Sunday night/ Monday morning. We had to be at the workshops by 8am. If we had left on Sunday we would have had to drive straight from Gerry's house to the workshops with out eating or sleeping!

I did get to finish the Double Worsted Throw in the car ride, so that part of it was good (not to mention a few good laughs along the way.) The throw ended up being almost 5' square, and fit perfectly, when folded in half, over the over sized recliner in Don and Glenda's (Gerry's inlaws) living room in the SC condo.

My visit to Old Fort, North Carolina was great. I finally got to see the Pisgah Yarn and Dyeing Factory, and meet Flo- who by the time we met face to face already felt like an old friend. I also got to meet several other friends from the Peaches & Creme group on Ravelry- Maile, Kim, Marie, and Zara were among them.

Teaching the workshops was a lot more fun than I expected, even though I was exhausted from the drive and the sleep deprivation. I think they were a success. Everyone in my beginner crochet class could do a sc stitch by the end of the class- although a couple were still struggling to keep a straight side edge on their swatches- and for a two hour session, I call that a great success! There was also a class each for my Kid's Reptile Bath Set, and the Floral Edged Bath set.

Here's the Reptile set:

We focused on the turtle soap sack for this, as again it was only a two hour block. Several people had the soap sacks done by the end of the class, and 1 person had completed the lizard washcloth, and Snake back scrubber before the end of the workshops on Tuesday.

For the Floral Edged Bath set we focused on the motif chain for the towels/bath mat. Two hours really wasn't enough for this project, but everyone seemed to get the idea of making the chain, and joining for the body of the pieces. So, although I would make sure to have a longer class next time, I was still pleased.

Marie, that I met at the workshop had actually done some pattern testing for me. Here is the sample she made for my Simple Summer Wrap:

Here's her work, being modeled by Flo, who was very surprised to receive this as a gift from Marie at the workshop.

I love this wrap, not only is it super easy, and quick to make, but every time I think of the inspiration for this piece, and see the finished product I chuckle. This was actually inspired by a shawl worn by a villainous alien in an old made for TV sci-fi film. I love the costumes in sci-fi films, but this is the first time I have successfully taken something so out there and translated it well into the real world.

After a day and a half in Old Fort, it was time for us to go and meet the rest of Gerry's family in South Carolina. Unfortunately my plans to meet Melanie, and Cat did not work out on this trip. Maybe next year? (Melanie, if you are reading this people at the workshop were talking about you and your blog- all good stuff, but I was so tired I don't remember what was said, or who said it)

Despite that disappointment, South Carolina was a lot of fun, too. We toured Charleston, which was a beautiful city, full of wonderful architecture- the likes of which you would never see in New England. Another thing in Charleston that you would never see in New England were the beautiful handmade Sweetgrass Baskets. Apparently the art was brought over from West Africa by slaves. The technique is passed down from mother to daughter, and is still only practiced in these two regions. The basket were rather pricey, but I did have to bring home a sample.

This is a small piece, about the size of a softball, but I loved the loopy sides on it, and I thought it was the prefect piece to bring home as a memento from the day. I bought this at the open market place in Charleston, where Gerry, Robin, and I walked around for a couple of hours, after Robin's parents took the kids home early.

I also had my first trip to a Hobby Lobby while in SC. Gerry's daughter Ella became very intrigued by a knitting book I bought for Gerry's birthday (it was the day before we left) and had to get some yarn to start a project. So, the three of us set out one evening to find some for her. We arrived at Hobby Lobby about 1/2 hour before they closed. The place was huge, and I would have liked more time to look around, but I did manage to get a few tools I needed, most of which were on clearance, and a ball of yarn. The yarn was Lion Brand Sockease. I had heard of it, but had never seen it. At $6.50 for a 100gm ball I couldn't pass it up. I was glad I got it because on the way home I finished the other socks I was working on, and needed something new. The shawl didn't end up being good car knitting.

Here's the sock ease, and the beginnings of one of Cat Bordhi's Dove socks, from the New Pathways book.

Well, this post has gone on way too long. I hope to have my next post soon!

Heading South

2008-08-09T10:19:00.003-05:00

Today is the first day of a greatly needed vacation! It's been over 3 years since I have taken a vacation, and I've been really feeling it for months now.

My plan was to have today to spend getting everything in order for my trip, but then I realized it has been a shamefully long time since I have posted here. So, I thought I would give a quick update on what I have been doing.

First of all I have some new designs that will soon be up on the Peaches & Creme website. There are two kits that will be released at the workshops on Monday where I will be leading classes for each of the kits, as well as a beginner's crochet class. I'll share pictures of those projects, as well as some others when I return.

As for my other WIPs, I have two big ones at the moment:

This is a throw blanket I am making as a host/hostess gift for my Brother's in-law's. I'll be staying at their 2nd home in South Carolina for a few days after the P&C workshops. I wanted to bring them a handmade gift, and had trouble deciding on exactly what to make. I had a few things started, and wasn't crazy about any of them. Finally, late Thursday night, I decided on this throw. It made from Peaches & Creme Double Worsted Weight, as well as some worsted weight- double stranded. The black and grey DW has been in my stash forever, waiting for inspiration, and the rest of the colours are large quantity left overs. I spoke to Gerry about it, and apparently I chose the colours well. He said it will match his MIL's decor perfectly. That was good to hear since it was over 2' square by the time I told him about it.

In this picture it's about 3' square. I will work it to 4' square, and then possibly add some sort of decorative border, or just finish off with a few rounds of black and grey stripes (I have the most yarn in those colours).

This rumpled ball of knitting is my mother's shawl that has been in the mental works for months now. My plan was to have this be my major road trip knitting. Unfortunately I have had so little time to spin that I don't think I have enough yarn to go very far with it. I do think if I get all of pre-trip chores out of the way by 2pm today I could potentially spin away for a while, and finish off the bobbin I have going now, then ply some more before the trip. I wouldn't get to set the twist, but I think it would be okay. I could set it in the hotel, and have it for the ride home next weekend.

I tried to spread the fabric a bit to give a glimpse of the emerging lace pattern, but it couldn't do that too effectively with only one hand, and I needed the other to take the picture.

I showed this to my father, and he said it looks like an old hair net. Just the sort of thing you want to hear after many hours of spinning, graphing, and knitting!

I have one last thing I will share before I go. This is not one of my projects, but a belated birthday gift from my brother:

This was Gerry's first pair of socks! Can you believe it!?

I was so honored to receive such a gift I didn't even have the words to express it!

They are quite warm, as they are made with Cascade 220, but I have still been wearing them quite a bit. In fact, I am wearing them now!

Silk Notebooks

2008-07-20T11:19:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I decided I would take some time to work on a project with the silk papers I made with Jodi. I decided to make some hand bound silk notebooks.

I had my first experience with hand binding books last fall when I made the vegetarian cookbook for Maureen, as part of her "Secret Pal" reveal package. The book I made for her was sort of scrap book style, with recipes printed on coloured papers, and mounted onto different decorative papers, and then it was all put together with a mulberry paper cover and bound using the Japanese Stab binding method.

After that experience I think it is safe to say that I will never be a scrap booker, but I did enjoy the process of binding the book, quite a bit. I made additional copies of the book for people that had shared recipes, and used pre-printed pages. I liked that a lot more!

When I saw the finished pieces of silk paper the first thing I thought of was these hand bound books, and I decided to have another go at it.

This time I took some 5x7 spiral notebooks, clipped away the spiral binding, and re-covered and bound them. I used the original cardboard covers as a base for my new silk covers.

This was great because not only were they already the same size as the paper, but they had

holes in the proper places for me to use as a guideline when sewing up my binding. I did have to punch the holes out several times through out the process of applying the silk, or they would have been lost. It was much more time consuming than I expected it to be, but when the books were finished this morning [I let the covers dry overnight before binding] I really felt like it was worth the time and effort.

I think the finished notebooks are absolutely beautiful, and will make wonderful gifts.

I had some other plans for the rest of the silk paper, but now I'm thinking they may all become notebooks. At the very least I will have to make more silk paper for future book binding projects.

Silk Fusion

2008-07-16T22:42:00.002-05:00

So, this is the result of my day learning a new craft.

It's hand made silk paper. Very Fun!

Yesterday, I spent the day with my friend Jodi, and we learned to do this together.

Jodi is an art therapist, and loves the creative process more than anyone else I know. This makes her a great person to be creative with- you can just feel her enthusiasm. Things have been tough for Jodi recently, and it was great to see her so happy while doing this!

Here are some action shots Jodi took of me layering the silk, and applying textile medium to bond it together.

It was a sunny, but surprisingly not humid day yesterday and the papers dried quickly. That was great because as you finished a new piece of paper the previous one was dried. That meant that we two first timers were able to see very quickly what we liked or disliked about any given piece and had the opportunity to progress quite a bit through just one afternoon.

I have several ideas about what to do with the finished sheets of "paper" but you will all have to wait to see what they are!

I'm So Behind!!

2008-07-14T12:35:00.003-05:00

It seems that the past few months I just haven't had the time to do half the things I want/need to do- much more so than normal. Blogging has been one of the things that has been neglected, but I am trying to check in (if you have noticed the abscence of my comments lately I am still reading!).

I mentioned in my last post that Melanie had given me a blogging award. The award came with instructions to pass it on, link to the original creator, etc. In my "breaking the chain" tradition I am not going to do that. What I am going to do is tell you about 5 blogs that I enjoy, that I don't think I have ever linked to before. So, here they are:

http://www.criminyjickets.blogspot.com/- Dave makes LOTS of wonderful socks, and has some free sock patterns as well as a few other fun things.

http://gildedbottle.blogspot.com/- Jeannie has recently started doing some of her own designs. Watch out for her. I think there is a wealth of untapped knitting and crocheted talent waiting to come out.

http://serialknitter.blogspot.com/ -Sunny is another new designer. Just like Jeannie, I think she will continue to to flourish in her creativity. I expect wonderful things!

http://yarnspider.livejournal.com/- I met Sarah over at yahoo 360. She spins and dyes and knits, and has some beautiful projects.

http://spinning-jenny.blogspot.com/ - Jenny always has something interesting OTN. I found her through ravelry, and have been following her blog religiously since the first time I saw her work. Her knitting is truly art.

Just to have a photo to put into this post:

These little turtles are actually crocheted soap sacks. The turtle is part of a reptile bath set that will be available on the Peaches & Creme website this August. It is also going to be the focus of one of the crochet work shops I will be teaching at the Peaches & Creme facotry this summer.

The rest of the set is complete, but no photos will be posted until the kit is available for sale.

Later this week I will be getting together with a friend to learn a new craft! So, hopefully there will be more blogging soon.

New Crochet Patterns

2008-07-06T13:06:00.002-05:00

I feel awful that I have been neglecting my blog so much lately. I have been very busy putting together new patterns and kits for Peaches & Creme, and I keep saying I will blog when I have more time.

Well, I have finally decided it will be too long before I have more time, so I will just have to be quick!

First of all I would like to give a very over due Thank You to Melanie for honoring me with the Arte y Pico Award. Thanks Melanie, I am going to try and pass the award on in the next few days.

Now on to what I have been up to:

As I mentioned I have new patterns up on the Peaches & Creme Website.

There is a fre pattern for the Triple Waves Dishcloth, which is a great one for using up odds and ends of cotton yarn. I used 3 colours for mine, but you could use 2 or 5, or 6, or....

There is also a free under the kitchen sink type rug, made out of the Double worsted weight cotton, the Semi-circular Rug. That is a quick and fun project, and I enjoyed making it.

This is a preview of a market bag kit that will be available in the next day or two. The Kit includes instructions to make the large grocery bag, and the smaller produce bag. The produce bag is made with size 5 cotton, and weighs under an ounce, so you can weigh your fruits and veggies right in the bag! No more small plastic bags to worry about- just toss this one in the washer/dryer in between trips to the market.

There is also a kit for a crocheted Beach tote, the Honeycomb Mesh Tote. This was my design, but the sample was actually made for me by a fellow member of the P&C group on Ravelry, Chris (ravelry name Erskinelake). Again, this is a kit, and it comes in such fun summer-time colours!

The last photo I will share today is the Crocheted Ridges Bath Ensemble. This is a back scrubber/bath mitt set I made to match a cloth pattern that had been posted quite some time ago.
I actually designed these by request, and had never used one of these back scrubbers before, so I had to give it a try. It was nice, I'll be making more.

For the next few weeks I plan to be very busy working on the new pattern kits that will be used in my crochet workshops this summer at the Peaches and Creme Factory (have I mentioned this before? Details here), and believe it or not a pattern I have agreed to test for another designer! I know I must be crazy, but there is a very special reason why I have agreed to test this pattern, and when I can reveal more you will get to hear all about it.

Fiber Prep, Day 2

2008-06-21T15:08:00.003-05:00

It's been quite some time since I started getting my mohair cleaned up and ready to spin (See Fiber Prep, Day 1) since then it has been tied up in two bags in my trunk.

Today the weather was perfect, warm, sunny, low humidity, and very little breeze. So, I pulled out all the mohair and went back to work. My workspace for sorting/picking the fiber is not very comfortable, and after a very draining week I didn't last long. I still have almost 2 pounds to be picked through.

When I bought the fleece, I was told it was approximately 2Lbs. I have since bought a scale for measuring my fibers, and found it to be close to 4Lbs. I knew it felt a lot heavier than 2Lbs!

This is the first 1 1/2 pounds of fiber being washed.

I filled the kitchen sink with [scalding] hot water, added a couple squirts of dish soap, and set the mohair on top. I let it soak until the water had cooled to room temperature. A sink full of wet mohair cools much more slowly than a sink full of plain water.

Word of caution here: Do not do this in your kitchen unless you don't plan on preparing food for quite some time. Besides the obvious bacterial issues, as soon as this stuff hit the hot water my kitchen smelled like there were several goats residing in it.

Here's what the water looked like when I took the mohair out!

The first rinse was almost as bad, but the second was nearly clear.

After rinsing I put all the fiber in a pillow case, bound it shut with a rubber band, and put it in the spin cycle of the washing machine.

Now it is out on my front porch drying.

I wish I had more time to spin recently, because I would really love to spin some of this up tomorrow. However, I still have quite a way to go spinning the Gotland for my mother's shawl. I think I have only used the spinning wheel once since I last posted about it.

In other news, My first pattern for sale is now available. This is a pattern for a crocheted kitchen set with placemats, napkin rings, potholders, and a couple other fun things. It is being sold as a kit, including the patterns and yarn to complete the projects. Check it out.

The biggest reason why I haven't posted much lately is because all of my available time has been spent working on new designs for Peaches & Creme. Most of which are crochet designs. There should be more free patterns posted later in the week, with more kits, and free patterns coming soon. All of the crochet designs in the works right now are pretty easy projects, most of them are beginner friendly.

Hopefully I will finish spinning the gotland and start my mother's shawl soon. I want to have it done by the end of the summer. Although, her birthday is in October, and it would be a nice birthday gift, but I do prefer to give hand knitted items as no-occasion gifts.

Not Again!

2008-06-11T12:31:00.002-05:00

So, I was tagged by Lynne.

For those of you who have been followed my blog since I was on Yahoo! 360 you know that I now will always answers questions, but I will not tag anyone else.

Here goes:

What was I doing 10 years ago?

10 years ago this month I moved to Braintree, MA. It was my second of 3 apartments with Aly, my room mate of 10 years. I was working for UNO's, and enjoying being in my early 20's.

What are 5 things on my to-do list for today?

Call Flo at Peaches & Creme
Get several packages packed and shipped out
laundry
clean my car (this is on my list everyday, I don't know why I don't just do it)
work on Gerry's Birthday gift, so it will actually be ready in August.

Snacks I enjoy:

Rosemary and Olive Oil Triscuits

Ice cream

Oreos

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

Make sure my parents got to do everything they want to in their retirement

Have a house custome made with a very large art studio

Take up all of those hobbies I wish I had time to explore

Travel a lot

Shop a lot

Places I have lived:

Lowell, Ma

Seminole, Fl

Amherst, MA

Northampton, MA

Braintree, MA

Quincy, MA

Belmont, NH

Jobs I have had

Nursing home "dietary Aide" and Cook

Telephone Interviewer for a Market research firm

Nutrition Care Coordinator

Waiter

Bartender

Restaraunt Manager

Getting Organized

2008-06-10T19:04:00.003-05:00

So, for months I have been thinking that my needle/hook collection has greatly outgrown the storage system I had in place for it.

Two days ago I spent half an hour looking for my 6" size 4 DPN's before I finally decided to just pull the 8" size 4's out of another project. Three hours later I found the 6" needles while looking for something else.

So, I decided it was finally time for a new needle organizer. I spent several hours this afternoon working on a new one. It has about 80% of my needles in it in the photo.

The front has (from the bottom up) a row of 4" pockets for crochet hooks, a row of 5" pockets for short DPN's, a row of 8" pockets for long DPN's, a row of 9" pockets for straight needles (I rarely use straights, and no longer than 10"), and a row of 4" pockets for extra items, like my 4" Addi DPN's, and cable needles.

The back has a row of slots for circulars, several small pockets for notions, and a row of pockets for jumbo needles, and afghan hooks.

It is so nice to have everything fit finally! I have marked the pockets, so I know what size the needles are. Now all I need is the discipline to put things back where they belong when I am done with them!

If I could only make one of these to hold all that yarn....

Washed and (Almost) Dried

2008-06-08T13:15:00.003-05:00

This morning the silk yarn was still very wet, so I took it out in the sun, where even by 9 am it was so humid I could tell it would take most of the day for it to finish drying.

The first picture is the yarn still fairly damp.

The second picture is one of the original hanks on top, slightly twisted, and another hank that I rewound in a different length to see how the colours would play together.

The red did not come out as strong as I had originally hoped, but I am very pleased with the over all results.

Since Sophia has some of the exact same yarn, and expressed interest in what I have done with mine I'm going to give more a more detailed account.

I started by soaking the silk in HOT water in the sink, a drop or two of dish soap should be used in this step (I forgot). When the yarn is thoroughly saturated-takes about 1/2 hour- it can be moved into the dye bath.

For the Dye bath I mixed Cushing's acid dyes, Egyptian Red-1/2 packet, and Terracotta- small amount left over, with 12oz boiling water, and 2 oz white vinegar. I then added enough hot water to bring the level of the liquid up high enough to cover the desired amount of yarn.

I then draped the yarn over the sides of the bucket that held the dye bath. One end of each hank was in the dye, the other end was low enough that it would continue to syphon liquid out of the bucket, drawing dye up through the fiber. I let this soak until almost all of the dye came out of the water- over an hour since my dye bath was not being heated. Then I steamed the yarn for 1/2 hour, and allowed it to cool before rinsing.

With La Luz being an unplied silk there was a small amount of surface fuzzing that occurred during this process, but it is still beautiful, and very shiny.

The Gotland only needed about an hour in the sun to be completely dry. I was very pleased when I saw it this morning. Not only did it not fluff up more in the wash, it really was finer than I thought it was while plying. It's about 21 WPI. You can see several strands crossing over the dime beneath it. This will make a wonderful delicate shawl for my mother!

Gotland Singles, and More Dying

2008-06-07T20:24:00.002-05:00

I had some unexpected fiber time this afternoon, and the sun was shining. So, I finally got some photos of the gotland I have been spinning.

This wool is amazingly soft, and I love the fuzzy halo the singles have. I was a bit surprised that it actually seemed to fluff up as I plied it. I think it will end up being a rather plump fingering weight as a two ply. I will know tomorrow, when the yarn I plied and washed tonight is dry. Fingering weight is probably perfect for the shawl I have in mind. The very fine lace weight I made for my sister's shawl would be a bit too light for this one.

Yesterday I managed to catch my friend Kim off guard and convince her to go up to the Patternworks tent sale with me. Last year I got an amazing amount of wonderful yarns for very little money. It seemed to me that there was a much smaller selection this year. It also seemed that the markdowns were not as good as last year. They were great markdowns, but last year's sale was crazy.

The big deal I got this year was on 4 hanks of Fiesta yarns La Luz. This is a beautiful 100% silk yarn that I have always wanted to try, but have avoided because of the price-over $25 a hank. Well, I paid $4 a piece for it yesterday! The down side was that it was the brilliant colours that I loved about the yarn, and I really wasn't crazy about the 2 colours that were available. I did find a solution to that, though....

I bought 4 balls of "golden rod", a yellow-orange colour. Today I dipped them in a deep red dye, and allowed the dye to travel up the yarn, to get a fiery red to bright orange ombre. This is also drying now, and I will try to have pictures of the dry yarn tomorrow.

Last, but not least for today, I had mentioned in a recent post that I had been late sending out my bookmark exchange package, because at the last minute I had located some materials I had been hunting for. I promised to share the project after it had been received.

Terri, my exchange partner, collects wizards and dragons. I figured with the popularity of Harry Potter, and other youthful fantasy fiction these days a wizard fabric would be as easy to come by as water. Well, not at all. Dragon fabric wasn't readily available. I did finally have a wonderfully helpful sales rep at Keepsake Quilting locate 2 different dragon fabrics. I went in to see them, and finally, I had a collection appropriate needle case for Terri.

While there were no actual wizard fabrics, I did find a "Camelot" fabric with references to Merlin. You can actually see "Merlin's Maze" in the photo.

I was very pleased to be able to get this in Terri's package, and she seemed to really enjoy it.

So, tomorrow, plied Gotland, and Ombred silk!

Another Dye Day

2008-06-04T12:12:00.004-05:00

On Sunday Lynne and I got together at her studio for another day of fiber dying.

The first picture is 1/2 pound of Tussah silk that I split into two batches. The top one was dyed with a variety of reds and burgundy, eith a touch of verde green. The Lower one was bases on the colour scheme I made up during our last dye day. Once again I used terracotta and taupe, but this time I left out the brown and added Egyptian red, which is really just one shade off from the terracotta. I really loved the way it turned out, and I can't wait to spin it up. I also dyed up the 10oz of local mohair roving I bought at the NH sheep and Wool festival. Once again I split it into two batches.

This one is a blend of Egyptian red, verde green, plum, and burgundy.

This one is green, purple, and burgundy. If you look closely you can see that green and purple blended into a wonderful shade of blue. That was an unexpected surprise.
All of this will sadly be packed away in the stash for a while, as my spinning time is currently being taken up by Mom's shawl. I purchased some beautiful grey Gotland roving from Coppermoose. I've ordered from them several times now, and I am always pleased with what I get.

I had read about the Gotland fleece, and when I saw it for sale I had to get some. This wool is so soft and smooth, and it spins like a dream! I am thrilled with the way my singles are turning out, but due to a lack of sun there will be no photos today.

SPECIAL NOTE TO JANEY

2008-05-29T20:36:00.002-05:00

So, I have meant to add this in to one of my last two blog entries, and have forgotten both times. This is directed to the Janey that left a comment inquiring about the meaning of "No Wire Hangers" associated with Joan Crawford.

Janey, I have tried to email you, but the emails have bounced back.

It has nothing to do with back alley abortions.

In order to understand the joke you have to watch the movie "Mommie Dearest" so, put it to the top of your Nexflix or Bockbuster queue!

I would try to explain it further, but I think you really have to see for yourself.

Catching Up.

2008-05-27T10:59:00.004-05:00

I hope everyone had a weekend. I usually don't get a long weekend for memorial day, but I did this year. I stayed at home the whole weekend, and used the time to get caught up on some projects I have gotten behind on.

In the spirit of getting caught up I have some over-due "Thank You"s to make:

About a week ago I got a mysterious package in the mail, it was rather large, and light and I didn't recognize the return address. I opened it up to find this:

This is two half pound balls of hand carded, hand dyes rovings from Jehovah Jireh Farm. It was a gift from Deb for helping out at her booth at the NH Sheep and Wool Festival.

In Addition to saying thanks to Deb, I would like to put in a prayer request here. I won't share any details, but Deb is going through a tough time, and could certainly use some extra prayers right now. Please pray for her well being.

Another Thank you goes out to Terri, my partner in the exchange for the MonthlyBookmarks group. I received this wonderful package from her a few days ago.

She included two hand made bookmarks. The flower bookmark is counted cross stitch, and the red and black bookmark is a beaded lace knit bookmark (it's red thread with black beads). I love them both, especially since I do not do cross stitch or bead work, so these are both items I would not make myself. She also included some Canada souvenirs- including chocolate loonies- and a pewter zipper tag that is a sweater still OTN. Thanks Terri!

Slightly embarrassing since I am the "group owner", but I am actually late sending my package to Terri. I do have a good reason, though. I had been hunting all over for materials for a special project for her. Last week I had given up on ever finding what I wanted, and was about to mail her package out with out it when I finally located what I was looking for. There will be pictures after she receives it.

Now onto the things I have gotten caught up with:

This crazy little animal is a toy I have had in the works-aka in a bag in the back of my closet- for about 2 months. He is based on a cartoon character, with whom I am unfamiliar. My friend's little girl had asked Santa for this toy for Christmas when she saw him at the mall last December. He told her he had lots of these dolls in stock. Well, Santa was confused, and no one makes a doll for this character.

I had a picture about 2x3 inches big to go on, and I've never made a stuffed animal before. Hopefully I will never have to again, but this little girl has spent the last five months wondering why Santa didn't fulfill his promise to her. Hopefully his will look close enough to the real thing to pass.

I have a friend starting Chemotherapy tomorrow, and have been saying for three weeks now that I had to knit up some hats for her. I finally got to that this weekend, too.

The brown hat was a free online pattern, the Lace Edged Women's Hat, made in Classic Elite Premiere. As I was knitting it I realized I had never knitted a hat before. What a wonderful instant gratification project!

The blue hat is made with Knit One, Crochet Too Wick. I'd never tried this yarn before, and I loved it. It makes a thick and spongy, but breathable fabric that wicks moisture away from the skin. I have to get more of this stuff.

There was no pattern for the blue hat. I knew that I didn't particularly care for the shaping at the top of the other hat, so I just did what I thought would work better, and luckily it did!

I actually got caught up on a bunch of other projects, but as this post is getting very long I will give you just one more for today.

I started to work on a shawl for my mother, and got about 8 hours worth of spinning in. Unfortunately I was spinning and being social at the same time, and my plied yarn turned out thicker than I had wanted, so I will have to start over with that. I am very excited about the yarn I am making for this project, and will post about it another time.

The shawl itself will be of my own design. I have been charting and swatching, and I came up with this:

Yes, it looks like something you would find in any stitch dictionary on earth! That part is slightly disappointing, but I do like it, and am going to use it. I will just have to design some fancy edging to make it more unique.

The good part of taking the time to chart, and test knit this is that now I am so acquainted with the pattern flow I will not need to look at the chart at all when knitting the shawl. I didn't even need it for the swatch. If I had taken the pattern from a stitch dictionary I still would have had to convert it to fit into the four wedges of the square as it grows out from the center.

The sample was knit in a 50/50 linen cotton blend from my stash. It's sport weight yarn on size 4 needles. The actual shawl will be much lighter yarn, on much larger needles. This was just to get an idea of how the pattern would look.

Spiral Shawl Finished

2008-05-23T14:03:00.003-05:00

Last night I finally finished the sewn bind off for the Spiral Shawl. I washed it, and finished pinning it into position around 1 am. It turned out a bit smaller than I expected, but you never can tell when a piece is all rumpled up like a sack on a circular needle. The fabric is airy and translucent, as I had hoped. In this photo it is draped over the railing of the front porch. When I backed up enough to get a shot of the whole thing you could barely see the haze of knitted fabric. This is a close up, with two layers of the shawl in the top portion.
This is the shawl immediatly after having the blocking pins removed. The lighting is very poor, but the tan rug does allow the pattern to show up well.
This shot is on the winter ravaged lawn. I wanted a full sun shot to give a sense of the colour. It does appear much darker than this in most light, but this shows the blue and lavender that really is in there.
I called my sister this morning, and she just happened to be on her way to the mall 2 miles away from my house. She lives an hour's drive from here, so I told her to stop by while she was in the area, and I gave her the shawl when she got here. Even though I had intended the shawl to be bigger she was very happy with the size.

Quick Update: Spiral Shawl

2008-05-15T19:01:00.003-05:00

Sorry for the flourescent light-photo, but since it is now a bit easier to see the spiral pattern I thought I'd give you all a quick update on the shawl. I stuck a white plate inside the shawl to keep it stretched out enough for the pattern to show. It is now way too big for me to stretch out on one hand.

The shawl is currently at 336 stitches. At it's current rate of growth I think my original estimate of starting the edging at 440 stitches will be perfect. So, there are just 26 rounds to go before I start the edging. I'm enjoying this so much [something I can't say about any of my other WIPs] that I will be sorry to see it end.

Fiber Prep, Day 1

2008-05-12T16:48:00.005-05:00

I did manage to get started with my raw mohair today. I spread it all out on a sheet on the front porch and picked out all of the fecal matter, big bits of vegetation, and clotted/felted clumps. There was actually much less waste than I expected. This is what I threw away.

After picking out all of the totally gross stuff I started going through the fiber more carefully to remove smaller bits of vegetable matter, second cuts that would be too short to spin, and to just get rid of some of the dirt. Doing this I did find more fiber that went into the trash pile, but not much.

On first glance, most of the locks would look like a tangled clotted mess, but a bit of finger teasing, or a couple flicks with the dog comb would smooth it all out, get rid of some of the excess dirt, and bring some of the fiber's natural lustre out.

It was a cool windy day, which was probably not the best day for this sort of activity, but I did get about half of the fiber sorted.

Besides my trash pile I had two piles of good fiber. One that had been thoroughly picked through, with all second cuts, VM, excess dirt, and other undesirable stuff picked out. The second still needs to be gone through more closely.

After bagging up the fibers I was left with this pretty mess on my sheet.

The photos below show the cleaned up fiber. The one on the top is a close up of the more carefully cleaned bag of fiber, and the one on the bottom is the batch that I will go through again.

Originally I was planning to wash the fiber in small batches, but I am now leaning towards doing it all at once in the bath tub.

I'll continue to post as I go through the process.

A Woolly Good Weekend

2008-05-12T12:52:00.007-05:00

This past weekend was the NH Sheep and Wool Festival. It was my first sheep and wool festival, and I'm glad I started with one of the smaller ones. Even though New Hampshire is not as big as Rhineback, or the Maryland sheep and wool festival there was so much to see for a newbie like me that it was almost overwhelming.
I arrived just before 10 am on Saturday morning. The festival had opened it's gates at 9. It was not yet crowded when I first arrived. First on my agenda was to locate the booth for The Irish Ewe, my friend Deb's Shop. For those of you who don't know, I met Deb at the Fryeburg Fair in Maine last fall, and she gave me my first taste of spinning wool. In November, when I had my own wheel, I trekked up to her shop for lessons.
This weekend Deb was a very proud teacher. When I showed her the shawl I was knitting out of my hand-spun lace weight she couldn't believe it. She kept telling people to go look at my yarn, and shawl. It was my 15 minutes of fame. I guess I have progressed more quickly than I had realized.

Just a few minutes after I found Deb her booth started to fill up. I took a picture for her, since her camera wasn't handy. Little did we know that this was merely the calm before the storm. For a good portion of the day Deb, and her daughter Dagny couldn't keep up with all of the people coming through to buy their rovings, and yarns. [If you are unfamiliar with their shop you have to check out their custom spun, organic Irish Aran Yarn] I spent a good part of the afternoon cashing out people's purchases just so they had time to answer questions, and help people find the products they were looking for.

My first purchase of the day was from the Irish Ewe. It was some roving from Deb's Jacob sheep. Deb doesn't actually know this, but this fleece is the real reason we met. I saw it in her booth at the Fryeburg fair, and loved it so much that I thought I absolutely HAD to have some. I knew nothing about spinning at that point, but there was supposed to be a drop spindle demonstration in the fiber house shortly. So, I thought maybe I would stay for the demonstration, and bring home some of this wool to spin up. Well my constant glances over in Deb's direction finally got her to come over and start up a conversation. I never did buy the roving that day, but I have some now!

Luckily I did get to get out and walk around the festival a bit before it got too busy, and make some other purchases. I had a mental list of things I wanted to find, but I also wanted to see as much as possible before I started making purchases, so that I could prioritize where my $$ was spent. The first booth that tempted me away from that plan was West Elm Farm. As soon as I saw the fibers there I knew I had to have some.
Because they were my first purchases of the day I tried not to go overboard. You never can tell how many "must have" things you will find. I settled on some white mohair roving, and some grey Icelandic roving. I got 10 ounces each, and later really wished I had gotten more.

I tried to go back at the end to get more of these rovings, but I couldn't remember where he was located. Luckily I mentioned that I was holding back because I hadn't seen everything yet, and he told me that I could contact him any time for more. Because I foolishly lost the contact information from the woman who sold me that wonderful mohair/merino roving at Spa, I was very careful to keep his information safe.

I made one non-woolly purchase. This is 7oz of organic green cotton. I had been wanting some colour grown cotton for my stash. Who knows if it will ever be spun up, because spinning cotton is seriously tedious work, but I am glad to have it for when the urge strikes.

My final, and perhaps most exciting purchase of the day, was this grey mohair raw fleece.

I had wanted to buy a completely unprocessed fleece just to have the experience of working a project entirely "sheep to shawl" as they say. Of course, in this case it will be goat to shawl. This was marked as two pounds, and I paid $12 for the whole thing. Deb tells me that coloured angora goats are very hard to come by, and it was a great price. However, I really think it is much more than 2 pounds. The total of the other fibers I bought was 31 ounces, and I had all of that (and a few odds and ends) in one bag, and the fleece in another, and the fleece felt much heavier. We'll have to see what it yields once I pick the grass and poop and other yucky stuff out.
I plan to blog the whole process. I think it will be fun to have a photo record of the whole project as it progresses.

My one disappointment of the day on Saturday was that I did not get to meet one of my ravelry friends that was there. I had sent Sophia a message in the morning to say what I was wearing, and that the best place to find me would be at the Irish Ewe's booth. I got a message from her that night saying that she made several trips to the booth to look for me. My guess is that we were probably with in a few feet of each other at least once, but either didn't recognize each other, or simply missed each other through the crowd. I was sitting in the back corner taking $$ most of the time.

Saturday ended with a nice dinner at Margarita's in Concord. I had actually never eaten there before, and was very pleasantly surprised to find a vegetarian section on the menu. I had cheese enchiladas, and they were yummy!

Sunday morning I had a voice mail message left by Deb the night before. She had left her cell phone charger plugged in in my car. She wanted me to mail it to her. Since I really didn't like the idea of her being so far from home, and have that long commute back with no phone, I decided she had given me an excuse to run back to the festival in the tiny window of free time I had on Sunday. Since it was Mother's day I had Mom in tow. I told her I wanted to get a picture of her with an alpaca, but she's too frightened of large animals. I told her the worst that would happen was that the alpaca would spit at her, and she found no comfort there.

As we were leaving I make a mad dash to try and find the West Elm Farm booth again, with no luck. However in that few minutes I did run into a ravelry friend Thadsoule. he had sent me a message to let me know he was going to be there Sunday, and what he would be wearing. As I took a corner I noticed the "cool boys knit" T-shirt he described. I did stop to introduce myself, but unfortunately really couldn't chat, as I had left Mom in line for snacks, and we were cutting it close to make it to family Mother's day festivities. It was fun to see him face to face, though. perhaps we will cross paths at another fiber event.

Well, I'm off to pick poop out of mohair. I know you are all jealous!

A New WIP

2008-05-07T10:35:00.003-05:00

I am finally working on something that I can share as I progress. This rumpled little ball of knitting is the beginning of Meg Swansen's Super Spiral Shawl from A Gathering of Lace.

I am using this handspun yarn, and size 9 needles.

If you are familiar with this pattern you know that it gives directions for a solid version, and an alternate eyelet version for every other spiral. I am making the solid version, so the eyelets will only be between the spiral sections. I am hoping the whole thing will be translucent in the end, and I think it will be, once it is blocked.

This shawl will be a present for my sister Sherryl. I'm nearly certain she does not read this blog, and if she does she will just be surprised now, as opposed to later.

My sister, like most people in my family, is rather short. This is a wonderful thing for circular shawl making, as the shawl will be plenty big before I the rounds get so long they seem unbearable.

The last shawl I made was for my Sister-in-law, who is quite tall relative to my family, and I was quite concerned the shawl would be too small. At one point I actually ripped out the edging and knit out a few more inches. I was glad I did!

This shawl start with 8 sts, and increases by 8 sts every other row. Right now it's at 208 sts, and I think I will bring it to 440 before I start the bind off.

You can already get a good sense of the spiral forming.

In other knitting news, work on the secretive presents continues...slowly! I actually started the shawl to buffer my irritation with 2 of those projects.

One had to be frogged completely, as I noticed a glaring mistake about 50 rows down, and I couldn't go on.

The other is actually very close to completion, but I needed a break. I'm now working on it for about 20 minutes at a time. After today's 20 minutes it will be mainly finish work left. Perhaps you will get to see pictures soon.

This weekend is the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool festival. I plan to spend the day there on Saturday, and will get to spend time with Deb from The Irish Ewe. I can't wait!

More Details from the Weekend

2008-04-30T09:55:00.003-05:00

Last night I was still tired from the weekend, and there was so much I wanted to blog about. I decided to save some of it for today.

My birthday was Saturday, and I received a couple of unique gifts I wanted to share with everyone.

Some of you already know that I love to listen to old radio theater. 20-some years ago I had bought a record at the local used record shop. It was a collection of old radio plays from the "Skippy Hollywood Theatre" I loved that record, and have often said I wished I could now find it on CD. So, when Gerry presented me with this:

I was amazed, and had to know where he found it. Well, it turns out that he didn't purchase it. He dug my old record out of storage, and his friend David re-recorded it, cleaned up the sound, and re-created the cover art to fit on a CD cover! I can't even believe David did all that. It was such a wonderful surprise. And, since I was making a road trip on my own the next day I got to listen to it twice!

[If you follow the link to David's business make sure to check out his blog. There are some great product reviews on it]

For my other unique gift my friend Gary [a master of kitsch and nostalgia] presented me with this. A Joan Crawford cigarette case. I don't think I will ever look at his with out getting a good chuckle.

Now moving on to a section of my trip that I skipped over entirely last night.....
I visited yet another yarn/fiber shop I had been wanting to get to for quite some time. The Fiber Loft in Harvard, MA. It was a rather large shop with a street level store front that had all of your LYS stuff, including a wonderful selection of needles. They had 6" Brittany DPNs in a wide range of sizes -I love those! There was also a great yarn and book selection. Then upstairs there were three more rooms. There was the yarn close-out and spinning room, and there were two rooms dedicated to coned yarns that could be purchased by the cone, or wound off and purchased by the ounce. It really was a fiber artists wonderland. I actually found myself looking over their large selection of hobby looms. I didn't get one this time, though. I did walk away with a beautiful merino/silk blend roving.
The photo doesn't quite do it justice. The silk portions are really a creamy white, and the blue is a touch softer. It looks like a perfect summer sky, with little wisps of fluffy clouds running through it.

Okay, now on to some crafting I have actually gotten done recently.

Back in November I made a vegetarian cookbook for my SP11 Spoilee, Maureen. Maureen and I are both vegetarians, and I thought it would add a fun touch to her final package. I had always wanted to try some sort of home book binding, but her book was my first attempt.

For the recipes in the book I used many of my own, and quite a few of Gerry's (he a vegetarian, too), but I also asked several of my friends, and online friends for a recipe to add. Those who provided one were promised a copy of the book.

Well, I finally got (most of) them done. I had to reformat the pages to fit more recipes on them. The original book was one recipe to most pages, and had the recipe printed on a solid coloured paper that was then pieced into a decorative background. I just couldn't do that another dozen times! I was very pleased with the new formatting of approximately 2 recipes to a page, and double sided pages (I left the back of all pages in the original blank for notes/recipe alterations). They made for slim, but attractive books.
For the copies I used some decorative printed papers to make each cover unique. I really liked the idea, but if I were to ever do a project like this again I would not use these papers. They were a bit too glossy, and I think eventually they will all bubble.

It was fun to do, though, and as I got used to the Stab binding I was even able to experiment a bit, and get some fancier lacing done.

What a Weekend!

2008-04-29T21:43:00.003-05:00

I returned last night from a weekend full of events. I apologize in advance, as usual I had my camera with me the whole time and didn't take a single photo! I think Because I hate to be photographed I am reluctant to ask others for photos.

My weekend started with The Elegant Ewe. They were celebrating 10 years in business, and had a 25% off store wide sale. Yes, everything in the store was 25% off. I decided I had to buy a ball winder and swift. I was hoping to buy a large swift, but they were all out of them. I almost chucked the idea all together. I have a few hanks of yarn (one in particular that is a tangled mess) that are just too big for the metal swifts that seem to be the most common. I decided to go for the small (but lovely) wooden swift anyway. I'm glad I did because it was plenty big for that 1/2 pound hank of lace weight that fell right off the metal swift.
You can see in the photo that it is all tangled and crazy. This isn't the full 1/2 pound. I had already wound off a ball when I snapped this photo.

Saturday I spent evening with my Brother. It was a nice time, and I actually got some knitting done. I had very little time to knit last week, and it seemed like for every row I knit I frogged two!

Sunday started out very early with the drive out to Northampton, MA. I Lived in Northampton when I was younger, and I love to go back and visit, but this was a very special visit! At 9:50 I pulled into the Webs parking lot. About 30 seconds later Joansie pulled up right beside me. (see her blog for photos of the event)

It was 10 minutes before store opening, and people were already lining up at the door. We did have a good hour to shop before the Yarn Harlot's book signing began. Joansie had come with a friend, Rebbecca, and we took turns standing in the book signing line while the others paid for our purchases. I also ran outside to call for lunch reservations during this time. We were afraid that every restaurant in town would be flooded with hypoglycemic knitters after Stephanie's talk.

Now Webs is certainly not the same size as your average LYS. Really it's an enormous wonderland of fibery goodness, and Sunday it was JAM PACKED with people, and I was VERY impressed at how well everything was handled by the staff. Staff members (actually I think it was mainly Cathy- the owner) went up and down the line writing names on post-it's so that Stephanie could skip the "and Who am I signing for?" conversation with each of the 1000+ people that showed up to see her, books were brought down the line for people deciding they needed extra copies, and bottled spring water was passed out all over the store. They had several wonderful door prizes, and donated 10% of the days sales, $4698.00, to a local charity.

Yes, I did make a small yarn purchase:

Webs was having their anniversary sale, and there were wonderful discounts all over the store. On top of that, in honour of Stephanie's visit they offered 25% off all sock yarns for the day.

I had realized that my sock stash was devastatingly void of green. I think I have rectified that! I will buy blues next time.

The Cascade 220 is for a project that has been on my mental queue for quite some time. I'm HOPING to get to it this summer. I had to buy the yarn for it while it was under $5 a hank!

After the signing we all headed over to the Calvin Theatre to listen to Stephanie's wonderful comedy. She really is a riot, and I highly recommend seeing her if you get the chance.

After that Joansie, Rebbecca, and I headed over to Paul and Elizabeth's, where we had a wonderful meal. I had tofu fried rice. It was a heaping plate of brown rice, assorted fresh veggies, and tofu. Joansie and Rebbecca both had the Portabello Mozzarella Wrap. Good stuff! I love that place, and really wish I could get there more often. It was a special treat- made even more special because Joansie and Rebbecca were there.

After that I headed into Boston, where I got to catch up with several friends I had not seen in months! When I got home on Tuesday I was wiped out, but it was well worth it.

Contest Results

2008-04-28T22:16:00.003-05:00

I want to thank everyone who helped me celebrate my blogiversary by entering my contest. It actually took place over a week that was unusually busy for me, and I am still trying to get to see the blogs of everyone that has commented. It was a fun experience, though, and I actually learned a few things. For instance, prior to this I had no idea there were blogs entirely about blog contests. I also learned that many knitters are sexist. Those of you who have referred to me as "she" know who you are.

A couple of things I wanted to share about the contest entries:

Person with most entries: Elaine (also had the most specified referrals)

Person who sent the most traffic: Rainberry (I noticed that 38 people followed a link from her blog, and none left a comment saying she sent them, but I gave her an extra entry for effort!)

The only person who correctly guessed all four fibers: Kristen

What were the fibers? From left to right they were:
Soy silk
Bamboo
Merino (I counted wool as a correct guess, since none of the others were wool)
Tussah silk (I counted silk as a correct guess)

And the winners are:

First Prize: Cat
Second Prize:BloglessinNJ
Third Prize: Rachel-O

Cat- You get first pick of the 3 Prizes:

A custom needle case, hand spun yarn, or hand-painted cotton yarn.

e-mail me with your choice.

Blogless and Rachel Please e-mail me with your addresses, and colour likes and dislikes. Blogless you will have your choice of the remaining 2 prizes, please include your first and second choice in your e-mail.

Blogiversary Contest

2008-04-22T11:34:00.003-05:00

So, I just realized that this Sunday will be the 1 year anniversary of my becoming a blogger. I started blogging here on April 27th 2007. I decided I would keep that date as my blogiversary, even though I have moved. Since it seems that a contest is customary for the anniversary of a knitting blog, here is mine:

This photo show 4 different types of roving from my stash. They are all 100% a single fiber (no blends). Guess what type of fiber each roving is.

To enter the contest leave a comment with your guesses listed left to right (they must be in the correct order to be considered correct guesses), by Monday April 28. Any guess will get you an entry in the drawing for a prize.

To get additional entries:

A correct guess on two or three of the fibers will get an additional entry
A correct guess on all four fibers gets you 4 additional entries
If you enter this contest and have ever commented on either of my blogs before you will get an additional entry
A link to this contest on your blog will get you an additional entry (you must let me know you have done this)
Any comment in which someone tells me you referred them to this contest will get you another entry.

So, the number of entries you can get is limitless.

The Prizes:

a custom needle roll-up
a 4oz hank of hand spun merino wool
a hank of hand painted cotton yarn

I will announce winners on Tuesday, April 29th. The first place winner (the first name I draw out of a bag) will get to choose whichever prize he/she would like. The second place winner will get his/her choice of the two remaining prizes, and the third place winner will get the remaining prize.

I'll Throw You a Bone...

2008-04-16T11:44:00.005-05:00

The title of this post is really directed at Melanie, who says I am driving her crazy not posting pictures of my recent knitting.

Recently I shared a photo of one of my secret WIPs with Melanie; it was a flat piece knit from the center out (and that is all I will say about it at this point). She told me she had never knit anything in this fashion, and would like to try. So, I quickly typed up a basic pattern for a round dishcloth and sent it off to her.

Last night I was looking for a quick, last-minute addition to a gift I will be giving later today, and decided a washcloth with a nice bar of soap was the way to go. Since I was deeply involved with my latest non-knitting obsession (a woman I work with just loaned me 4 seasons worth of Stargate-SG1 DVDs) I didn't want to have to look at a pattern, so I decided to use the same design I had sent off to Melanie, with one exception, I changed the bind-off to look more like something I have been desperate to see lately... the sun!

So, here is the cloth:

I know the colours are not very sunny, but this was a cotton yarn I had been dying to see knit up, and I really like the colours.

Now for those of you who are accustomed to finding free patterns here, I will throw you a bone as well...

Here's the Pattern:

Painted Sun Washcloth

materials:

1 ball Peaches and Creme . I used colour #190, Painted Dessert
set of 4 DPNs, US7 (4.5mm)
G-6 (4.0mm) Crochet hook
stitch marker
tapestry needle

Directions:

Cast On 6 sts, and divide evenly among 3 needles. I used Emily Ocker's Circular Cast-On, and there is a wonderful pictorial demonstration here.

rnd 1) Place marker at beginning of round, K around
rnd 2) [K1, YO] 6x
rnd 3) K around
rnd 4) [K2, YO] 6x
rnd 5) K around
rnd 6) [K3, YO] 6x
rnd 7) K around
rnd 8) [K4, YO] 6x
rnd 9) K around
rnd 10) [K5, YO]6x

continue in this manner where every odd numbered row is knit, and every even numbered row has 6 YO increases placed 1 stitch further apart than they were in the last increase row, until you have 24 sts on each needle for a total of 72 sts.

You are now ready for the garter stitch edging. If you, like Melanie have not knit a flat piece from the center out before this edging will be great practice. It is a great way to end a circular shawl, tablecloth, or blanket, as it allows the edges to stretch much more than just casting off the edge would.

You should now be at the first stitch of your round, however if you choose to change yarns and knit your border in another colour you may start this anywhere.

Using the knitted cast on (I like these directions) CO 4 sts

row 1) K3, K2tog- this knits the last of your new stitches and the first stitch from the edge of the center of your cloth into 1
row 2) K4
row 3) Sl 1, K1, YO, K1, K2tog -again, you have just decreased one stitch from the center cloth edge you will do this on each odd numbered row
row 4) K5
row 5) Sl1, K1, YO, K2, K2tog
row 6) K6
row 7) Sl1, K1, YO, K3, K2tog
row 8) K7
row 9) bind off the first 3 sts (this will leave the 4th stitch knit and on your right needle), K2, K2tog

Repeat rows 2-9 until all of the original center edge stitches have been decreased into the edging. You should end on row 9. Bind off your last 4 sts, and sew Bind off edge to cast on edge.

Before I end for today, I have one last thing to share. Remember the BFL roving I got from Witchypoo? Well, I have spun up one of the braids, the blue-purple one, and I just love it! I bought this because so many hand spinners seem to make a fuss about the BFL wool, and now I know why. This hank is about 180 yard of a DK-ish yarn- I actually tried to go a bit more thick/thin with this than I usually do- and I do have some singles left on the bobbin, and a bit more to spin up.

I think it looks wonderful in the photo, but not nearly as great as it does in reality.

Still Knitting in Secrecy

2008-04-14T11:08:00.003-05:00

So, the gift knitting continues, and probably will for quite some time. So, still no pictures of the current knitting.

However, I did visit a new-to-me yarn shop this weekend. Mind's Eye Yarns, in Cambridge, MA is a shop I've been wanting to visit for quite some time. I have called the shop on a couple different occasions when I was having "fiber emergencies" and was always met with such amazing helpfulness and courtesy that I've felt awful having never even been in to see the store.

The very first time I called was the day I bought my spinning wheel. Still knowing next to nothing about spinning wheels, I thought the lack of a drive band was going to be a big problem, and given the hour on a Saturday I was in a near panic to find one. I had gone to Waltham, MA to pick up the wheel, and I went directly from there to Gerry's house (1.5 hours closer than mine) to look up Ashford dealers in the area. Mind's Eye was the closest one. I called and was told while they had the drive band in stock I should save myself the drive, and use cotton kitchen twine. I was in awe! Obviously this shop was not out to make a quick sale, just for the sake of doing so. I have great respect for a business that will offer good advice at the risk of losing a sale. I know that the purchase of a drive band would not have bought the shop owner's next trip to Europe, or even enough yarn for her next sweater, but I still appreciated the help, and ethics involved.

Since I had plans to meet a friend in Boston for Dinner on Saturday I decided it would be the day I finally made it in to see the store. Somehow I had had the impression that it would be a sprawling expanse of yarn, roving, and wheels, but when I arrived the reality of the store's being in the heart of the metropolitan Boston area sunk in. Of course you wouldn't find a LYS the size of Walmart in the city- space is just too expensive. I did however find a very nice shop. In the bottom floor of the owner's home the store had several windows providing plenty of natural sunlight (very important for colour selections) and was well organized with a very nice selection of yarn, and a rather impressive selection of spinning fibers.

Of course I buy fiber and yarn about 100x faster than I can use it, and I'm running out of space to store it, but I had to have some of this merino/tencel roving

Also, I thought I would share a little more recent spinning. This is about 2 oz of white wool scraps that I decided to use to play with some dyes. One ply I used Cushings acid dye in plum, and the other ply I used Wilton's cake dye in black. The wool I dyed with the Wilton's ended up having mainly shades of a dark green with spots of a deep purple. When each of these were just tiny blobs of wool I wasn't sure that I cared much for either of them, and therefore didn't take much note of exactly how much dye I used, but now that I see them spun up and plied, I want more! I'm fairly certain I will never match this yarn (a shame that I only have 100 yards) but I'm sure I will be playing more with the dyes in the future.

Gerry Came Through with the Photos

2008-04-11T21:58:00.005-05:00

Warning: You must read the previous post " A Thank You, and Giving in to the Demand" for any of this to make sense. Also, this is a very picture heavy post. If you have dial-up you may want to go make a cup of tea while it loads.

Gerry did manage to locate and scan a bunch of photos from the X-files party, so I get to show you some of the things I spoke of, and a few I forgot about. Unfortunately there is no picture of the "Alien Autopsy Serving Dish" yet. Gerry thinks he has some somewhere, but I fear that we may not have taken any.
This is the Roswell UFO Crash Cake. It's looking kind of messy on the photo, but you can see the chocolate flying saucer that has crash landed into the cake. On the top left is one of the marzipan alien crash victims, and on the bottom left there is another, somewhat obscured by the wooden spoon.

The next picture is of a trifle that Gerry made. See Moulder and Scully wading through the pudding to recover the alien?
Just behind them you can barely get a glimpse at one of my themed serving dishes. This one is a UFO serving dish. However, it is already empty, and the bottom is on top of the lid (which was the part that was actually decorated.

This is me at one of the parties. I bought those silver pants while visiting friends in Chicago. We were planning on spending the evening at a discotheque and I didn't have appropriate clothing. The X-Files party was the 2nd time I wore them, and when I was in the basement changing into the costume I sat down to lace up those boots, and got caught on a nail. I ripped the backside of the pants wide open! I didn't stay in costume long.

These are the Alien soaps I made as party favours for one of the parties I had to miss. I figured with soaps I could drop them off a couple days in advance, and they would still be just as good! Each soap had an opaque back, and a clear glycerin front with an alien suspended in it.

And here are the Sculptures I made for the series conclusion:

The first photo shows, on the left, the sculpture entitled "Tooms" Tooms was a character that appeared in 2 episodes early on in the series. He could stretch and contort his body to travel through ventilation ducts, and plumbing. You see him starting to peak out of an air duct here.

In the middle is another, whose title I can not remember, but it depicts a tiny alien embryo in some sort of cryogenic cylinder (made out of a juice glass).

On the right is another alien with octopus-like tentacles. Nothing to do with the show- Just for fun.

The second picture is the Alien Autopsy.

Picture Number 3:

Left: Serpent Alien- again just for fun

Front center: "Fluke Man" was a genetic mutation caused by nuclear waste from the Chernobyl disaster. He lived in water and attacked men to lay his embryos with-in them, where they would develop, and eventually kill the host. I think this was season 1. The episode was entitled "The Host" It was the first episode of the show that I saw, and will always be my favorite.

Rear Center : Well, I'm having a hard time remembering episode names (most I have not seen in years). However, this was based on an episode where M&S found a secret lab set up in a warehouse where genetic experiments were taking place. There were Human-alien hybrids in tanks hooked up to all kinds of tubes and equipment. I think the episode may have been "The Erlenmeyer Flask"

Right, another view of Alien Autopsy.

In the last photo:

Rear Left: "Darkness Falls" another of my favorite episodes. In this episodes lumberjacks cut down an ancient tree and release some sort of insect that had been sealed with in the growth rings in hibernation. These insects were inactive in the light, but at night they would swarm and kill humans, then wrap them in a cocoon hung from a tree to save them for future snacking. [hey! I wonder if I could spin the silk from one of those cocoons!?]

Front Center: Hmmm, I think this was based on an episode called "Anasazi" I do remember that some sort of ancient alien mass burial site was discovered in the desert.

Rear Center: "Samantha" For those of you who never saw the show, Agent Moulder, who had revived the FBI's un-solved "X-Files" believed his sister had been abducted by aliens right before his eyes 30ish years prior to the show. Although Samantha is long gone she is truly an integral part of the show, finding her is Moulder's only true motivation in life. My depiction shows a flying saucer hovering over a girl in bed, illuminating her with a beam of green light.

Thank you Gerry for forwarding these pictures. Perhaps we should have an X-files reunion party this summer so I have an excuse to recreate the alien autopsy serving dish!

A Thank You, and Giving in to the Demand

2008-04-11T09:34:00.003-05:00

I want to say a big Thank You to Joansie, for these wonderful gifts!

Back in December Joansie posted that she had joined a "pay it forward exchange", and I signed up for the exchange with her.

This week I got a package in the mail with a note saying it was the PIF gifts and an early birthday present.

The package included a wonderful grey ribbed scarf that she knit with Berrocco Ultra Alpaca, 6 note cards she made with her own photos, and bottle of eucalyptus Eucalan (I had actually been wanting to try this, but they don't carry that fragrance where I buy mine) and "Things I Learned from Knitting" By Stephanie Pearl-McPhee.

I think the book, specifically was a birthday present, because Joansie and I will be meeting up in Northampton, MA later this month to see Stephanie at Webs, and I had told Joansie I planned to buy her latest book there at the signing. Now I will have the chance to read it in advance.

For Faye, Lisa, and Tammy who are awaiting my PIF packages, I am working on it, but they won't be ready for a while now... too many gifts OTN at the moment.

As for giving into the demand:

Yesterday Joansie shared a picture of her Easter Bunny cake that she makes annually, and explained that she started the tradition as a young mother who really wanted to impress her children. Although I have no children it reminded me of a scenario in my life, and I left this comment on her post:

I love your Bunny cake. When I see you at Webs remind me to tell you the story of the "alien" cake I made once, and the years of trying to out- do myself that followed. (it's way too long for a blog comment!)

Today I recieved an e-mail, and this was it's entire content:

Not Fair!!!! How can you leave a story (comment on Joansie's blog) like that unfinished! I demand you blog the story of the alien cake!!!!

As I had written my comment to Joansie I had thought of blogging the story, but decided against it, as I can not locate photos to share. I guess I'd better reconsider that decision. So, here it is:

My brother Gerry, and several of his friends were huge X-Files fans and some where around season 3 or 4 started having a party to get everyone together to watch each season Premiere and Finale as they aired.

For the first party I had promised to bake a cake, and as I was mixing the batter I decided I wanted to do something to tie the cake in with the theme of the evening. I ended up grabbing some green food colour and some Oreo cookies and made a green cake with dark brown veins running through it. I used a simple chocolate icing, so the cake looked quite normal before it was cut, but a bit shocking once you saw the inside. I called it the "Alien Cake" and thought it was a fun touch, but nothing more.

When it was time for the next party I promised to bring a dessert again. It was a busy week for me, and I decided to buy cookie dough, and bake cookies just before the party so they would be fresh (if not truly home made). The day before the party Gerry happened to mention that his friends had been so impressed by the alien cake, and couldn't wait to see what I made this time.

Suddenly the simple sugar cookies didn't seem good enough, and in a panic I rushed out to the local paty supply store and gathered up a bunch of junk that I hoped to fashion into something that gloriously represented the spirit of the show. Here's what I got: Two disposable serving spoons, two disposable serving sporks (a spoon with a fork like tip), chocolate chips, a heart shaped cookie cutter, an alien head candle, and a disposable shell shaped foil cake pan.

I went home and, once again pulled out the green food colouring. With that , the cookie dough, and the chocolate chips I was able to squish the heart shaped cookies into alien heads. While they baked I took the plastic utensils (limbs), foil pan (torso), Alien head candle, and some silver fabric and fahioned a hollow alien in a space suit. When the cookies were cooled they went into the foil pan from the back of the alien. The whole contraption was then flipped onto a parchment lined cutting board. A scalpel was laid aside the alien, and at the party we cut into the Alien's chest (the foil pan) and opened it up to reveal the cookies. I was amazed that I had successfully pulled off my "Alien Autopsy" serving dish!

Then there was the next party.....Two a year for several years. Each time I felt the need to out-do myself from the previous time. I can't even fully recall every dish I made for these parties, but I seriously racked my brain each time.

I know I made an alien head cake, and I cleary recall my favorite one:

The Roswell Crash Landing cake: Based on the popular story that a UFO crashed in Roswell, NM in the 1950's, I started with the Grand Canyon Cake found in this humorous cookbook, it's a five layer cake, each layer a different colour, split down the center after assembling and frosting. The different coloured layers are supposed to represent the different layers of the earth's stratosphere that are visable in the Grand Canyon. After I split my cake down the center I inserted a UFO I had molded out of chocolate. There were also marzipan aliens lying injured at the scene.

For the series finale I was asked to make a series of sculptures based on the show, one sculpture for each season! I won't even get into desribing them, however, I have asked Gerry to try and locate some of the photos, since I can not find any of mine. So, perhaps I will be able to share photos at a later time. I have no idea where the actual sculptures are these days. I think most have been damaged beyond repair since then.

The BSJ Completed

2008-04-07T14:26:00.004-05:00

Since the baby is due soon, I figured I had to get the dreaded finish work done on my BSJ. So, the arms have been closed up with a three needle bind-off, and the buttons are in place.

The last BSJ I made was with machine spun yarn, and needed no blocking. I think this one can use a bit, though. It's not a rumply as I thought is was going to be, but the button band does not naturally lie flat, so I think a bit of steam is in order.

The pewter buttons are hand made by a New Hampshire craftsman, and have the tree of life on them.

So, my first hand-spun garment is complete and ready for gifting. I'll almost be sad to see it go.

I do still have a few other projects OTN, but they are all gifts I can not share. So, I fear I may not have much to post about in the coming weeks.

I will however still be spinning, so may be that will produce some photo-worthy product!

I have still been working on my mohair/merino lace weight, but I'm getting a bit bored, and have occasionally switched to another fiber for a little variety. This weekend I decided to indulge myself with a little hand painted BFL from Witchypoo. There are also a some hand painted silk caps That I have already begun to fluff up. I can't wait to play with some of these!

More Handspun

2008-03-31T12:22:00.004-05:00

Okay, things are cooperating a bit better today, so I can share the other photos that I had intended to show you yesterday.

A couple of weeks ago I went down to do some fiber dying with my friend Lynne. I was dying some worsted weight wool for a co-worker that I had just taught to knit. She is preparing to get started on her first real project, a shawl, and I had her pick out some colours. Becuase I have never worked with the particular colours before I wanted to test them first, and see how they blended together. I took some left over scraps of white merino and got this:

I absolutely love it! I think I wil actually use the colour combination again at some point. I used Cushings acid dyes that were purchased at The Elegant Ewe, in Dark brown, Taupe, and Terra Cotta.

Since it was just left over bits of roving it was already in fairly thin strips. Once I fluffed it all up, and pre-drafted a bit it was very thin. I think it spun up my finest singles to date.

The end result was this:

Just over 300 yards of fingering weight 3-ply. I absolutely love it, and really want to knit it up into something special. Any suggestions?

One last thing before I go, when I was taking photos of the yarn yesterday it was rather warm out. The snow melting off of the roof was creating a steady stream of water that ran over the window in the den. It made me think of one of my blogging friends. So, Melanie, if you are reading, this photo is dedicated to you!

Fresh off the Bobbins

2008-03-30T12:07:00.003-05:00

As of yesterday I hadn't photographed any of my recent spinning, but in the spirit of breaking in the new Brileyknits I got out the camera this morning.

Most of my Spinning these days has been devoted to the "midnight" merino/mohair I bought at SPA.

This is a very loosely combed , fluffy roving, and although it is not the easiest to spin, I love the way the fiber feels in my hands. It's moving very slowly, but I am really enjoying it.

For those of you who haven't seen it before, here is another shot of the singles. I think the finished yarn is going to have a wonderful mohair halo. I have a vaugue plan for the yarn, but am still deciding on a specific pattern.

So far I have about 450 yards of 2 play lace weight. I haven't set the twist yet, as I want to have it all spun up first, but I think it will probably fluff up into a DK weight. I'm hoping to get another 500 yards out of whats left. I think I have enough.

I had more to share today, but the photos won't seem to upload right now, so I guess I will try again later.

Recent Knitting

2008-03-29T20:21:00.006-05:00

Since I haven't blogged on Yahoo for a couple weeks, and I've only posted earlier FO's on this site, I figured I should show you some of what I have been working on. Unfortunately, my largest WIP has to remain a secret for the time being, but I have been working on more than one project, so here's what I can share...

I have finally finished my Tomten Jacket. I started this as a KAL with my brother Gerry at the end of October. It has gone in and out of sleep mode a few times due to holiday knitting, and occasional loss of interest (aka frustration with silly errors). Tuesday I decided to just get it finished. It's still waiting for a zipper, but the knitting and seaming is all done.

I have also nearly completed my hand-spun BSJ. I need to sew up the top, and add the buttons, and possibly a collar, but here's how it's looking.

I've been doing quite a bit of spinning as well, but haven't taken pictures yet. I will try to get to that soon.

A brileyknits Make-Over.

2008-03-29T11:27:00.006-05:00

For quite some time I have been thinking about relocating my knitting blog from Yahoo 360 to another space but was undecided about how/when/where. I knew I wasn't happy with Yahoo's blogging features, but was hesitant to move, thinking transferring all of the content would be way too annoying, and losing it would be too sad.

A couple of weeks ago I became totally annoyed with Yahoo and just stopped blogging. I decided my next post there would be my Farewell post. Well, after thinking it over for a bit I decided that brileyknits is getting a bit cold- with new patterns not popping up as frequently as they did in the beginning. So, I will now put all of my blogging right here!

For those of you who come for my patterns, I have added an index for easy access (Look to the left).

For those of you who didn't know I knit more than bath mitts and bookmarks I will share some of my 2008 FO's:

This cabled scarf was a congratulatory gift for my friend Fouad when he received his Master's Engineering license in January.

The spiraling Coriolis socks were the first pair of adult sized socks I made from Cat Bordhi's book New Pathways for Sock Knitters. If you enjoy knitting socks and don't have this book- get it!

I call this the "Accidental Baby Sweater" My friend Cindy was taking a trip to Peru and wanted hand made garments to give as gifts for the local children. I thought I had a week to get it to her (I mixed up my dates and actually had five weeks) so I just cast on and started knitting, with no pattern or actual measurements to go on. I was hoping for a large-ish toddler sized sweater, but it really ended up being about a 12 month size. I used Peaches and Creme yarn that I had hand-painted myself.

A few weeks ago I finished this Hemlock ring blanket. It was made as a prayer shawl for a friend of a friend who had just lost her husband. I used Irish Aran from the Irish Ewe, and was very pleased with the results.

So, there you have it. A bit more than dishcloths. I will be posting more soon about my WIPs, and other fibery pursuits.

Felted Alien Egg

2008-02-21T14:25:00.005-05:00

I know it seems forever since I have posted here. I finally have something new for you all!

Before I get into it I would like to let you know that I have still been designing bookmarks and dishcloths, and other cotton items you can find some of my newer patterns over at The Home of Peaches and Creme, and expect to see more there soon.

What I have for you today is not exactly a pattern, but more a guide. When I posted my Felted Alien Egg on ravelry I recieved a few requests for a pattern. At the time I had planned on making another, and promised to write up a detailed pattern as I made it. However as my project plans continue to grow I have pushed that way down the list. So, instead of a specific stitch by stitch pattern I am going to give you basic directions to make your own Felted Alien Egg.

This project was inspired by the "Alien" movies staring Siourney Weaver, or for you younger readers/knitters, "Alien vs Predator". It's a pretty simple knit, but I made the project slightly more complex by dying it after it had been knit-up. I actually found it much easier to deal with the dying process when I didn't have to worry about the yarn tangling and felting (since it is a felted project that past doesn't matter). I felt dying the project myself added to the finished product, by making the CC veins on the outside blend a bit better, but you could just use a dark green yarn, and skip that part.

Okay, on to the project!

Materials:

White or a light-natural coloured wool. I used a bulky handspun, you could use a bulky yarn, or a worsted weight yarn double stranded. If you do not want to dye your finished piece use a dark earthy green.

scraps of a bright green or blue wool-- if you are not going to dye your project these scraps should be a green one or two shade darker that your main colour.

DPN's in a size large enough to make your STst rather loose.

16" circular needle in same size as DPN's

Crochet hook (optional) the same size as your DPN's, or one size smaller.

yarn needle

stitch markers

green acid dye (optional)- I used Cushman's Acid Dye in Army (I think) green

a latex balloon or plastic bags

abbreviations/stitches used:

K- knit

P- purl

KFB- knit into the front and then the back of the stitch, increasing by 1

K2tog- knit 2 stitches together - decreases by 1

P2tog- purl 2 stitches together- decreases by 1

Directions:

Egg is knit from the center bottom up.

Cast On 8 sts- if you are using a double strand of yarn I would use a single strand for the cast on to eliminate a bulky lump after felting

divide amongst 4 needles, 2sts to each

rnd 1- knit all placing a marker after each stitch (you don't need to have markers in between the needles, but will need to add markers in those places when you transfer your work onto a circular needle)

rnd 2- KFB in each stitch around

rnd 3- K all

rnd 4- [K to 1 stitch before marker, KFB] around

repeat rnds 3 and 4 until desired width of egg is reached- remember that you will lose about 30% during felting so you want to knit your egg 30% larger than you want your finished project to be. Transfer project onto the circular needle when ever you are comfortable doing so. Remember to keep the markers in place- adding markers between needles

When you have increased to your desired width knit for several round straight. Knit all sts in all rounds until you have reached finished hieght you desire after felting. When this height is reached you are ready to start decreasing.

Since the top of the egg will taper more than the bottom you want to derease at twice the rate you increased. You you will have two decreases evenly spced between each marker. If you had 16 sts between each marker your decrease rounds would be as follows:

rnd 1- [K6, K2tog] around (you would do this 16 times- 2 times between each marker)

rnd 2- K all

rnd 3- [K5, K2tog] around

rnd 4- K all

and so on, until you have drecreased your sts by 1/2 to 3/4 (depending on how wide you want your top opening to be). Tranfer sts back to DPNs if necessary. Make sure that your final stitch count after dereasing is divisable by 4.

Now you will seaperate your stitches into four equal sections to make the top opening. Working each section seaperately form your flaps as follows:

row 1- K2tog, K to end.

row 2- P2tog, P to end

repeat these two rows until 1 stitch remains on the needle (your last row will be either a K2tog, or a P2tog with no stitches left to work) break wool, and pull through final stitch.

When all four flaps are complete weave in all ends.

Using scrap wool and crochet hook slip stitch "veins" along the outside surface of the egg. You could also embroider or duplicate stitch them on.

Dye and felt your egg. My egg took several runs through the washing machine before it felted to my liking. I dyed it before felting, but you may do it in either order.

When egg is felted sufficiently stuff it with plastic bags, or blow up a balloon inside it [this is so it holds it's egg shape] and leave it to dry. In the above photo you see my egg stuffed with plastic bags. I fleted it down once more after this, and used a balloon to shape it. I liked the balloon better.

Pay It Forward

2007-12-19T13:40:00.000-05:00

Okay, no new designs right now, sorry. I've been busy with other things lately, but will post more designs in 2008.

For now I will let you know that I have joined the Pay it Forward exchange. If you would like to recieve a hadnmade gift from me check out the details here. The first three people to leave me a comment (between both blogs) that they want to join the exchange will recieve a handmade gift sometime in the next year.

UPDATE:

my three PIF recipients are:
Tammy
Lisa
Faye

Crocheted Halloween Bath Set

2007-10-13T09:06:00.001-05:00

So, I have been saying I would put some original crochet designs on this page for quite some time, and I'm finally doing it.

I wanted to give my nieces and nephew something cute for Halloween. Candy was out of the question, because they will end up with more than any child needs. So, I thought this little bath set would be fun.

The spider web washcloth is just alternating rings of white and black with surface slip stitches to complete the look (and add some extra texture for scrubbing!) The spider is two rings joined around a round cake of soap. The legs are made during the joining. I want to add some sort of facial detail, but I haven't decided what yet. I'm thinking of using hot-glue to attach some googly eyes.

The great thing about these is that the pattern is such a simple repeat that you just work until they are the size you want. No worries about gauge, or correct number of rounds!

To make the set you will need:

cotton yarn (any kind), about 1oz (if using worsted weight) black and small amount of white (or another CC yarn)
crochet hook sized appropriately for yarn
scrap of waste yarn to mark beginning of rounds
round cake of soap- any size (smaller is probably better for a child)
yarn needle for hiding ends
your own creativity to add eyes to the spider

Abbreviations used:

ch- chain
slst-slip stitch
sc- single crochet
dc- double crochet
rnd- round

Spider Web Washcloth

[with white] ch2, sc 6x in 2nd chain from hook, changing to black, join to first sc with a slst, ch1
2sc in each sc around, changing back to white, slst to first sc, ch1-12sc
[sc in 1sc, 2sc in next] around, join with slst to first sc, ch1-18sc
[sc in first 2sc, 2sc in next]around, changing to black, join with slst to first sc, ch1-24 sc
[sc in first 3 sc, 2sc in next] around, changing to white, join with slst to first sc, ch1-30sc

continue in this manner, increasing each round by 6 sc (the # of sc in the first round) making every third round black, and all other rounds white (or whatever CC you choose) until cloth is desired size. End with a black round. Cut and secure yarn, hide ends.

To add the spokes of the web:

hold black yarn to the back of the cloth, from the front insert crochet hook through the first ring of black sc. Pull yarn through cloth to the front and attach with slip knot to the hook. Insert hook into next row of sc and slst. continue to move out toward the edge of the cloth in this manner, keeping your line of slip stitches as straight as possible until you reach the end. Cut and secure yarn (I knotted the yarn tightly at the edges, as I thought they looked better extending over the edge a bit). Repeat this process around the cloth, as many times as it takes for your striped cloth to become a web.

Spider Soap Sack

note- You want to have your cake of soap handy while making this, as it will be used to judge the size to make your piece.

I expected that the young children I am making my Halloween bath sets for will not use these for a second season, so I completely sealed my soap sack, if you want to be able to re-use this you want to adapt the pattern to allow for changing the soap cake.

With Black chain 2

sc 6x in 2nd chain from hook. join with slst, ch1
2sc in each sc around. Join with slst, ch1

Just as with the washcloth, but with no colour changes continue to work in rounds, increasing by 6 sc each rnd. Holding the fabric on top of your round soap, it is the right size when it just begins to extend beyond the edge of the soap all around. Cut and secure yarn, hide ends. (this is the bottom of the spider. For the top repeat this process, making sure that the same number of rounds (resulting in the same number of sc in final rnd) are worked, but DO NOT cut yarn- you will continue to work in rounds as follows:

next rnd: ch3, DC through the back loop in each sc around, join with slst to first sc

now holding your spider top over your soap, the DC round should cover 1/2 to 2/3 the thickness of the soap. If not repeat the previous round until it does (you want the fabric to stretch over the soap, but not too tightly). Once you have the sides the right length place soap in between the two pieces and begin to slip stitch them together. The outside edges should have the same number of stitches, so you will slip stitch 1sc to 1dc with no extras. When the first 1/3 of the round is joined [here is the best point to adjust pattern for a reusable soap sack-you could skip this portion of the joining and just lace up this section later] you will begin the legs as follows:

slst into next st, chain 10, slst in 2nd chain from hook and each chain following until you are back at the base of the spider (if your legs are too short add more chains, just be sure to use the same number for all 8 legs)
slst in next st
slst in next st, chain 10-repeat previous method to return to spider base
slst in next 2 sts, chain 10-repeat previous method to return to spider base
slst in next st
slst in next st, chain 10-repeat previous method to return to spider base

your first set of legs is done, continue to slst around to last 9sts, repeat above process. Cut and secure yarn. Hide ends, and use your creativity to embellish your spider's face.

Frankenstein's Monster Cloth

2007-09-26T10:46:00.001-05:00

So, It's been a while since I've posted a new dishcloth pattern, but as promised here is something for halloween. My original idea was to go along with the science lab dishcloths, and make a Frankenstein's Lab, but it seemed way to intricate for too little effect. So, here's the monster complete with flat head, and surgical scars.

This cloth is actually smaller than most of my cloths. Recently I have had several people tell me they like a small cloth. If you want a larger one just add extra border stitches, and rows.

There is another halloween cloth, or two, on the way. I still have to get them test knitted. I may find the time to get one of them done tonight.

Frankenstein's Monster Cloth

materials:

Worsted weight cotton, about 1 ounce
US size 7 needles
Yarn needle for weaving in ends

directions:

Cast On 35 sts

rows 1-5) K all
row 6) K3, P6, K17, P6, K3
row 7) K11, P13, K11
row 8) K3, P11, K7, P11, K3
row 9) K11, P1, K2, P7, K2, P1, K11
row 10) K3, P8, K13, P8, K3
row 11) K11, P13, K11
row 12) K3, P8, K1, P2, K7, P2, K1, P8, K3
row 13) K14, P7, K14
row 14) K3, P11, K7, P11, K3
row 15) K13, P9, K13
row 16) K3, P9, K1, P9, K1, P9, K3
row 17) K11, P1, K11, P1, K11
row 18) K3, P7, K1, P13, K1, P7, K3
row 19) K9, P1, K15, P1, K9
row 20) K3, P5, K1, P3, (K1, P1) 6x, P2, K1, P5, K3
row 21) K8, P1, K2, P13, K2, P1, K8
row 22) K3, P5, K1, P3, (K1, P1) 6x, P2, K1, P5, K3
row 23)K8, P1, K17, P1, K8
row 24) K3, P4, K1, P19, K1, P4, K3
row 25) K6, P1, K2, P1, K1, P1, K16, P1, K6
row 26) K3, P3, K1, P17, K1, P3, K1, P3, K3
row 27) K6, P1, K2, P1, K1, P1, K2, P7, K7, P1, K6
row 28) K3, P3. K1, P7, K2, P3, K2, P7, K1, P3, K3
row 29) K6, P1, K8, P1, K3, P1, K8, P1, K6
row 30) K3, P3, K1, P8, K1, P3, K1, P8, K1, P3, K3
row 31) K6, P1, K8, P1, K3, P1, K8, P1, K6
row 32) K3, P3, K1, P4, K3, P2, K1, P1, K1, P2, K3, P4, K1, P3, K3
row 33) K6, (P1, K3)2x, (P1, K1)3x, (P1, K3)2x, P1, K6
row 34) K3, P3, K1, (P2, K1)2x, (P1, K1)5x, (P2, K1)2x, P3, K3
row 35) K5, P1, K4, P1, K3, P1, K5, P1, K3, P1, K4, P1, K5
row 36) K3, P2, K1, P5, K3, P7, K3, P5, K1, P2, K3
row 36) K5, P1, K23, P1, K5
row 37) K3, P2, K1, P23, K1, P2, K3
row 38) K5, P1, K23, P1, K5
row 39) K3, P2, K1, P3, K1, P1, K1, P17, K1, P2, K3
row 40) K5, P1, K12, (P1, K1)2X, P6, K1, P1, K5
row 41) K3, P2, K1, P3, (K1, P1)2x, K5, P11, K1, P2, K3
row 42) K5, P1, K12, P1, K1, P1, K8, P1, K5
row 43) K3, P2, K1, P23, K1, P2, K3
row 44) K5, (P1, K3)6X, P1, K5
row 45) K3, P2, K2, (P1, K3)5x, P1, K2, P2, K3
row 46) K5, P25, K5
row 47) K3, P2, K25, P2, K3
row 48) K5, P25, K5
row 49) K3, P29, K3
rows 50-54) K all

Bind off, weave in ends.