Is there a wool intervention?

Last April I learned how to knit Intarsia. I instantly came up with ideas for knitting, not one but FOUR, afghans as Christmas presents. THIS Christmas.

Then a day spent surfing the web and I've rekindled my passion for learning how to hook rugs. BAM, I have a sudden brain storm for my mothers' Christmas present. THIS Christmas. Mind you the only hooked rugging I've done was latch hooking as a child. This step runner has to be classy and look realistic as the recipient does not appreciate anything remotely folk artsy.

These ideas and plans can not wait for Christmas's down the line, oh no! They HAVE to be designed and created by me in time to give this year.

Christmas 2013 now looks like:

One Intarsia Rainbow Dash afghan

One Intarsia Pinky Pie afghan

One Intarsia Apple Jack & Big Mac afghan

One Intarsia honkin' huge block afghan

One hand dyed, hand spun, hand hooked step runner (learn how to hook rugs first)

Four hand dyed, hand spun, hand knit Christmas Advent Wreaths (learn how to knit on dpns first)

Two or three hand spun skeins to gift to someone who doesn't think handspun should be sold for a lot of money.

I've said before that I need a wool intervention. Then it was to keep me from buying more fleeces. Now I need one to keep me from having all these "wonderful" ideas.

tdf13 Day 10

Today was a spinning 'rest day' in tdf. As much as I love to spin, I needed the break. I had all kinds of plans to get things accomplished today but since I didn't get any sleep last night, I was a lazy useless bum all day long.

I did get a lot of planning done for a party we're having in December. I also made a bunch of yarn butterflies to use in the behemoth Intarsia afghan I'm knitting for one of my sons and one round knit. It takes nearly two hours to knit one round the thing is so big.

Tomorrow I get to do all the things I didn't get done today, including year end reports which are now late.

Still knitting

Anyone who knows me knows I'd much rather spin than knit.
That being said, I WILL get this shawl knit before mid December.

To Do list

I think I may have been knit into a corner.

I knit this little pouch to keep the daughters ocarina in. Now she wants me to knit more (only larger) as goodie bags/dice bags for her Halloween party.

Number needed- unknown

Mom's birthday in 7 days.
She wanted me to knit her more cloths and dish towels but didn't like the heavy ones (can't blame her). I finally found one I think we will both like. I knit this one up in a day.

Needed: 3 more cloths and 1 dish towel (more or less)

Christmas: Most of my family members know what our money situation has been like this year so hopefully they won't mind if I make them dish cloths and towels as well.
For my niece, son and his wife, Rainbow colored dish towels bordered in black with matching colored cloths. My dad and his wife will get the same only in subtle colors. I'm not sure what mom will get since her birthday will be what everyone else is getting for Christmas.

Hopefully I haven't over extended myself this time. I'm pretty sure this year will be more manageable than what I tried to do in years past.

And of course there's the shawl that I still need to get worked out for the Hobbit opening night.

And I just remembered my sister has a birthday in December as well. There goes my thoughts of manageable knitting.

Well I'm nothing if not persistant

Or as my family likes to call it, stubborn.

After my last post, I figured out what I was doing wrong with my N-plying so, I decided to give it another try.

I plied two small skeins of New Scarecrow.

And one full 4oz skein from Spinfusion called Viola.

I also finished my Monarch Paws scarf

It's a little wonky but I still like it.

I've been a little busy

My spinning wheel FINALLY works.

This is Fiber Fancy's "New Scarecrow" in Merino and Tussah silk. I took it off the wheel to try N-plying because that's what I'd like to do with this yarn. Needless to say, I won't be ruining this pretty yarn with my N-playing (s)kills. For some reason, I spin even thinner on the wheel than I do with a spindle. My automatic spin weight seems to be fine lace for singles, which is annoying the heck out of me. I'd love to get some nice squishy worsted yarns.

I've set aside this scarf in order to try one a little less attention intense.

This is my Monarch yarn knit in the Cat's Paw Lace Scarf. I hadn't realized how much the tension had changed until I'd laid it all out like this. I probably should knit an entire project in one day so my knitting isn't drastically different in the middle. Hopefully with blocking it won't be so drastic.

And lastly, we lost a member of our family two weeks ago. It's taken me this long to be able to go through the pictures of him.

His younger years.

R.I.P. Echo aka old puppy.

14 years

The start of 2012

I knit my first hat.

I used Into the Whirled's Cerulean Dreams club in Romney. I knit it using this pattern but ran out of yarn about 10 rows from finishing so I had to top it off with some Black Welsh.
I'm rather happy with it as first knit hats go. I'm going to wash up and spin a bunch of white and brown llama fleece that I have laying around and use that to make a bunch more hats.

My daughter asked me if I made any New Years resolutions. I usually don't because I inevitably break them and then I feel disappointed in myself. On that note, the following pictures aren't proof of a resolution so much as a reminder to myself of why I don't need to renew my fiber clubs.

All of these are looking into a 22 gallon tub.

22 gallons of randomly purchased braids and bumps.

22 gallons of fiber clubs.

And looking into the same sized container, we see my handspun yarns.

I need more fiber like I need another hole in my head, but once the clubs start renewing I'll get all excited and want to rejoin. What I really should do is not buy anymore until I've gotten a lot of this spun.

Wish me luck getting THAT accomplished.

My first attempt at knitting lace

It's fun to do but something tells me I need a lot more practice at it.

Fiber play & Autumn fun

The "Enjoying the Weekend Blues Scarf" is finished!

It ended up being just over 7 feet long! I was going to knit until I ran out of yarn but it was getting ridiculously long so I cast off. It's nice and soft and warm though. I hope my sister likes it.

The only thing left I have to make for Christmas is the Plums and Olives scarf, which I'm spinning now. I'll block both scarves at the same time and make life a little easier on myself.

Fuggly is almost finished. He's the perfect size for sleeping on the couch so I'm keeping him long and narrow. He's about two and a half times the width of that picture but he's just more of the same ugly acrylic yarn so I'll wait to take a final/final picture. All I have left to do is crochet a boarder but I'm happy leaving him as is for now. What I really need to work on is my son's afghan in black, grey, and red. Not colors I'm looking forward to knitting, and I'm using Red Heart Super Save yarn (ick) but he needs some winter warmth. I've started knitting it in the same pattern I used for the Enjoying the Weekend Blues Scarf. It breaks up the monotony a little bit without making it so hard that I can't concentrate on it while I'm watching tv.

The weaving bug has bitten again and I've been weaving little squares with leftovers.

I'm really not happy with my little handmade looms though. I'm thinking I may just have to take all the junk that's accumulated on my floor loom (it's an automatic coat rack & table for taking pictures of my projects) and get someone to help me move my huge warping board to a place where I can use it and have a go at a larger weaving project.

Something totally unrelated:

Halloween.
Some of my kids still love the holiday. My daughter looks forward to it all month. This year she made adorable little cupcakes.
This one's my favorite.

She carved an awesome pumpkin

I just realized we didn't get a picture of my youngest son's pumpkin. I'll have to get one before it gets icky.

And, along with her sister-in-law became a Silent Hill nurse. That link will take you to a creepy/violent video. Be forewarned.

They both love the movie and games (as does my oldest son). I just find it very disturbing.

Last but not least, our walk in the park yesterday.

Credit: Cara took the last two pictures.

Plums and Olives in merino and viscose

I'm kicking myself right now because I forgot to take a before picture.
For reference, and for as long as it's up, I got this fiber from Fiber Fancy and the picture can be seen here.

After doing a little test knit, I've decided to keep it single ply and knit a scarf for my mother.

I really need to take the time to learn how to N-ply so I can keep colors together with a 2ply. This would be "SO Soft N Fuffy!" and gorgeous if it were a N-ply.

I'm still working on my other knitted scarf as well as Fugly. I just get bored too easily and need to move on to other projects every once in a wile. These two scarves WILL be done by Christmas though. If they're not then...well I'll think of something to threaten myself with.

Back to the needles

Enjoying the weekend blues

I've finished spinning the fibers "enjoying the weekend" and "blue gradient" and picked out a simple knitting pattern.

It'll get progressively darker as I get further along because I started on the light end of the blue gradient.

I will still have some singles of "weekend enjoyment" left for my woven afghan too. I love the colors in this. I really need to learn how to n-ply so I can keep colors together.

More than a nice scarf

Like I said in my last post, I thought two fibers plied together would make a nice scarf.
I wasn't wrong. After spinning and plying half the fiber (4oz), I thought I should knit some up just to make sure I was happy with it before I continued spinning it all this way. I spun and plied it very loosely and thicker than my comfort zone allows. I wasn't sure it would even hold together and I needed to decide if I wanted to ply all of it together or make sections of one pure color interspersed with the plied colors.

I shouldn't have worried. This yarn so SO soft and yummy and I love how the colors are turning out. If I had a couple pounds of this stuff I'd be making a sweater for myself. This was supposed to be just a test swatch but I couldn't sleep last night and got a little carried away.

I think I'm tempted to stop knitting up the merino/tencel and un-ply it to see if I can make it softer. It's too crunchy for my liking and I know it's from over plying because the singles I had left over are soft. I'm learning that it really pays to test knit my yarn while I'm still learning how to spin. I'll see what I can do with it once I've gotten this one finished.

I never did follow directions well

In my last post I told myself that I needed to pick a pattern and spin specifically for that, since I suck so much at knitting.

So of course I went on to knit something without a pattern.

This is the 2 ply lace that I spun for tdf this year. It's just the basic knit stitch and with 500+ yards I figure I should have enough yarn to make it a decent length. Hopefully the pretty colors will make up for my lack of knitting well.

Speaking of tdf, I won up to 10 patterns from KTLV! I figure it will be years before I'm good enough to knit any of them, but hey, I won something!

How much yarn could a non knitter knit if a non knitter could knit yarn.

A scarf that's only 26 inches long?

And I ran out of yarn before I could balance the end with the beginning, so if I were to keep it as a scarf type thingy I'd have to undo the last several inches to balance it.
Maybe I could sew it together as ear warmers?

I think my best bet, for next time, is to have a pattern planned and spin for that. Still I'll have to have a vague idea of how many yards you get per ounce.

The deconstruction of a scarf-type-thingy

This was once this

Which was once this

Which began it's life as this

It's always nice to look back and see how I much I can screw something up, don't you think?

No, I'm not really upset. This was a lesson I needed to learn AND, I got to use my little right side/wrong side sheep!

Post tdf

About half way into the tour I kept wishing I could wrap yarn around needles and MAKE something with some of this finished yarn. Now that there's time to do that

I'm reminded that I really suck at it.

Oh well. This blog will also be used to document my journey into the world of learning how to knit.

Because I'm not using a pattern I'll write it down now before I have to stop knitting and forget what it is I'm trying to do.
1-9 k
10-15 k3 p5 k3 p5 k3 p5 k3 p5 k3
16-18 k
19 - ? repeat 10-18
end with repeat 1-9 at end of yarn.
I'm hoping there's enough yarn to make a decent scarf.

This thing is getting to large to manage. It's 73 rows (so far), nearly 7 feet long, and still fuggly. But I knew that wasn't going to change. So far I've been a good girl and have only worked on this afghan since I started it. I'm still itching to get the loom warped, and there's the counted cross stitch wolves I've got going, the card woven straps I want to weave, and the table top covers I want to embroider, not to mention all the wool that still needs washed and carded before I can spin it.... heavy sigh.

I've taught my daughter how to crochet now. I tried last year but she wasn't interested. Now I've given her a skein of very fuzzy soft-as-a-bunnies-butt yarn and she's working on her own scarf. Maybe I can talk her into crocheting her own afghan too. That would be one less for me to do.

Making progress. Fugly progress.

Slowly but surely. There were at least two nights when I was too tired to even crochet. It takes me about 40 minutes to crochet one row I think. I haven't really timed it except that it takes longer than an half hour tv show, and even longer if one of the cats is "helping" me.

I do a lot of flittering between projects and one of my looms has been whispering to me. I'm trying to be good and get at least this afghan finished before I start something else. I still have my son's afghan that I'm knitting. I'm still not happy with it, but I've started that thing over so many times I think he's afraid he'll never be warm this winter if I don't just go ahead with it.

The plan is to finish the fugly afghan by the end of November ('m not making Christmas presents this year), then get a warp on the loom while working on the knitted afghan, as well as starting another afghan with different yarn and a real pattern this time. I have a lot of baby sport and fingering weight yarn that I want to use up. It's very soft and pastel so I'll have to come up with something that suites it.

Wish me luck.

I'm still here

Phew what a busy summer I had. I wish I could say that I have a lot of free time to blog now, but alas, school started again so I'm still without blogging time. I'll still blog when I can and as things start clearing up around here (life wise I mean) I'll be able to blog more often.

In the mean time.

What do you do when you have been given 5 totes full of yarn? Well, it wasn't really "given" since my husband paid her for them but I feel like they were given. Hubby picked up a load of unknown craft items (I think there were 7 black garbage bags full) of stuff and brought it home for me. There was a lot of stuff in there that I will never use so we added it to a bunch of our other stuff and had a humongous yard sale.

Back to the yarn though. I love some of it. It's soft and silky and high quality and cost more than I would be willing to shell out for yarn. Yes I'm cheap. I pulled out what I wanted to keep for knitting, crocheting, and weaving and put the rest up for sale. After the sale I still had tons of yarn I don't want. They are colors that I wouldn't normally work with, or pretty colors I love but there's not enough to make what I want, or colors that don't go with each other well.

So, what do you do when you have scads of ugly yarn and left overs? You make a fugly afghan of course.



24 colors, most of them are full skeins, so I will be making more than one of these things. Just a simple crochet stitch so I don't have to think while I'm working on it, and with six people living in a cold drafty old house we don't care if it's pretty as long as it keeps us warm. This one is nearly 7 feet long because we have giants living among us.

I'll be back when I can. This was a rushed post as it's our anniversary and I need to get ready to go out for an early dinner and movie.