Knitamazoo(tm)

I know, I know . . . I haven’t posted in ages and now I’ve done 2 posts in 2 days. I hope I haven’t caused any heart attacks.

This is just a quick post, as I wanted to show you all what I am currently working on. Lace has been my knitting of choice lately and I am currently working on the Fibertrends Sheep Shawl. I am loving it! I’ve had to rip it back a couple of times but I’ve been putting in life lines so it wasn’t so bad.

There is that one larger than life YO and I have no idea how I managed it. I’m going to have to try to share some of it out with the stitches next to it and hope that blocking helps. I’m on row 105 of 210 rows and then there is the border. so it’s coming along.

And from the “What will they think of next?” files, scientists have developed an allergy free peanut! Good news for those of us who suffer from this allergy!

I just finished up a class at my local art institute about spinning designer yarns. It was a lot of fun and also a lot of work. It was a 4 week class and we must have had to do about 60 hours worth of spinning. The following are some of the fruits of my labors.

The first week we did not spin at all in class. Instead we worked with blending fibers and colors. This batt started out as a little sandwich baggie filled with various fibers. I was really surprised at how much fiber I had after running it through the drum carder. I loved the singles that it produced! I couldn’t wait to see what it looked like plied.

It is quite different from where it started but it is still gorgeous! I haven’t figured out how much I have or how many WPI’s yet.

We worked on some plying techniques in class the second week, focusing on navajo plying which I have done quite a bit of. The third week we worked on making slub yarns and boucles. Boucles are kind of fun, look impressive but are TONS of work! I don’t know if I would do another one or not. I only got about half of it plied and there is still one more plying to be done to lock in the little loops.

Week four was about garnetting and adding fun things to your yarn. We again didn’t really spin, but made batts. I still haven’t spun up my batt yet. But here are some of the yarns that I did spin up in class.
 

I am totally bouncing off the walls right now! A lady who I knit with at my LYS has a sister who is getting into raising alpacas. Her sister was visiting about a month ago and mentioned that they would be shearing the alpacas soon. Of course my eyes lit up and it took all of the self-control I had not to jump this woman and scream, “I WANT ALPACA!” But I very calmly mentioned that I would be interested in purchasing some raw alpaca fleece from her. Well my friend J, worked it out with her sister and I am now the proud owner of some very lovely alpaca fleece. *WARNING - SERIOUS FIBER PRON BELOW*

First off is a bag of black and white fleece from Rocky. This bag has quite a few second cuts and I’m not sure how much usable fiber I will get out of it, but beggars can’t be choosers right?

I’m sure I’ll get some usable fiber though. It will probably be my biggest challenge.

Next up, is a lovely black fleece from Mo. This bag was marked “blanket” so it should be fairly free of second cuts (I hope). I did dig through it and it looks pretty good. It’s such a deep, rich black and I can’t wait to spin it up! There is 2 1/4 lbs. in this bag.

The thing I love about alpaca is there really isn’t any lanolin, so the fleece isn’t greasy. Just oh so soft!

And last but definitely not least, this fantabulous brown fleece from Rusty. (I’m going to have to ask for pictures of these animals. They must be uber cute!) This is by far my favorite one. The color is just so . . . there are no words to describe the color and the picture does it no justice at all. I also think this is by far the softest one of the bunch. There is 1 3/4 lbs in the bag.

Now all I have to do is figure out how I’m going to spin this. I’m open to any suggestions from more experienced spinners! I’m going to go squeal some more and bounce off a few more walls!

Just a quick post . . . I have found an awesome quarterly online spinning magazine (ala Knitty) that totally rocks! It’s called Spindle and Wheel and is just getting started. Thanks to the Yarn Harlot for getting the word out! Check it out if you spin, and even if you don’t, check it out anyway . . . you might just catch the spinning bug!

Hopefully I’ll have some time soon to post some real knitting and spinning content. And now back to your regularly scheduled knitting . . .

Well it’s finally finished. I stitched the buttons on around 9pm on Friday night and wore the sweater today. What sweater you ask? Why the Mystery Sweater of course! This was a free pattern that they have been using for classes at my LYS. I picked up the pattern and yarn just before New Years and got started. It was all I knit for quite awhile but it has been languishing a bit in my knitting basket. I finally bit the bullet, buckled down and finished it. I absolutely love it! It’s a fun knit and changing yarns keeps your interest. So without any further ado . . . I give you the Mystery Sweater . . .

A good picture of the sweater but a bad picture of me. I could probably have added another 1/2-1″ to the sleeve cuffs but it’s a heavy sweater and I think the weight of the sleeves might just pull them long enough. If not, well then I can always add onto the cuffs.

And here’s the back. All of the edging, including the collar, is done in double moss stitch. I really like how this stitch looks.

So, now I’m back to working on socks and a super secret project. Shhhhh . . .

Currently it’s 3 degrees F (-16 C) with a windchill of -18 (-28 C)! BRRRRRRRRR!!! It’s been a good weekend for curling up with some hot cocoa and knitting. I’ve drank a lot of hot cocoa but I haven’t done much knitting. Why not you ask? Well I’ve been spinning instead! I haven’t touched my wheel for awhile and I was working on some lovely mohair. I sat down this weekend and filled up a bobbin. Now I need to do another bobbin full so I can try out my tensioned lazy kate. Don’t worry . . . I’ll probably be knitting during the Super Bowl (GO BEARS!!!).

I picked up the mohair while I was home with my parents and family over Christmas. Applerose Farm is about 3 miles from where they live. They raise Cormo sheep, California Red sheep and mohair goats. I found out about them while researching places to get Cormo roving after reading about it on the Knittyboard. I couldn’t believe my luck! I picked up 4oz of the mohair and a pound of the Cormo. I haven’t tried the Cormo yet, but it’s as soft as a cloud. The mohair has been spinning up very easily and I’m sure I’ll get enough yardage out of it to knit a lace shawl.

I’ve finally set the twist in my first handspun. It seemed dry when I checked it this morning. I don’t have enough of the white wool to make an entire hat so I’m going to use the chunky, slubby white wool for the brim and then use some of the gray wool I spun for my class for the rest of the hat. I can’t wait to see how it turns out! I’ll be sure to post a picture when I get it done.

That about wraps it up from here. Stay warm, enjoy the Super Bowl (GO BEARS!) and happy knitting!

So, we woke up Thursday morning to around 3 inches of snow and darling hubby got up and snow blowed the driveway. I did my part by getting up a little earlier and getting my shower out of the way so he would be able to get cleaned up when he was done and head off to work.

After my shower I went down to the basement to feed the cats. I opened the door to the laundry room, turned on the light and thought to myself . . . “Hmmm . . . I don’t remember getting an indoor swimming pool.” There was at least 2 inches of water on the floor. I’m not sure if the drain on the floor clogged or if the city sewer backed up but the kitties had to swim to get to their food. I called for the hubster and he managed to get the water to drain. Now we have a fan going to dry out the rugs on the floor and we had to put down a bridge of towels so that the cats could get to their food and litter box. What a day!

In knitting news, I’ve been working non-stop on The Mystery Sweater. I haven’t even done a stitch on a sock. (I’ll wait while you pick yourself up off the floor!) I am just enamored with this sweater. You’re changing yarn so often that you can’t get bored and since you have no idea what the finished sweater will look like it’s fun to watch it take shape. My mom wanted to see pictures of it so here you go.

When I took the picture I didn’t get the stripes all lined up like they should but you get the idea. For awhile I was dealing with over 500 stitches! I’m glad I’m past that point and it’s only taking me 15 minutes to knit a row instead of an hour. That gets real depressing after awhile since you don’t feel like you’re getting anywhere. But I knitted on and soon I could see progress.

After all the striping is done on the body, the sleeves are done and then it’s time to pick up stitches and put in a button band, collar and edging along the bottom. I think at one point I have to pick up 192 stitches (I may put the needle through my eye before I get them all picked up.)

And here is a closeup of the different yarns that I am using. The dark brown stripe above the fringy looking stuff is Softy. This stuff sure lives up to its name but don’t drop a stitch . . . you might just kill yourself trying to find it.

I’m excited as Beth Brown Reinsel will be teaching at my LYS in March. If I could afford it I would sign up for all 3 workshops she is doing but since I’m not rich, I’ve only signed up for one. I will be taking the Swedish cast-on and techniques class. I can’t wait!

Well it’s been forever a really long time since I posted anything. Things got turned upside down at work and life hasn’t stopped since. All of a sudden they fired a bunch of people and we got really busy so that meant more work with less people to do it which equals STRESS!!! Plus they were rolling out a whole new desktop environment and we were spending most of our time running around fixing problems after people were upgraded. So now that is winding down and things are getting back to normal.

My father-in-law passed away right before Thanksgiving and we made a quick (read: 22 hours each way) trip to Florida for the funeral. He had been battling cancer so in a way this was a blessing.

For Christmas, we loaded up the car and drove to New Jersey to visit my family. At least that’s only a 12 hour drive each way and we stayed several days. My brother and sister-in-law were there as well and we had a really nice time being with family.

In September I took a spinning class at our local art institute and fell in love! Before our class was over I had ordered up a spinning wheel and couldn’t wait for it to arrive. This was my 10th anniversary gift and I just love my Ashford Traveller. I’ll have to upload some pictures of both the wheel and what I have spun.

In knitting news, I’ve completed several pairs of socks and not much else. I knit a tam and a pair of fuzzy feet for my mom for Christmas though. I have also been working on a few sweaters. I have Salt Peanuts on the needles in Malibrigo, a top-down raglan in some wool I picked up at Zeilinger’s, and the Mystery Sweater. I just finished up another pair of fuzzy feet for myself as well.

I continue to teach classes at my LYS. Monday I had a class of total beginners and they are working on a felted bag. They picked it up quickly and I am looking forward to the next class this coming Monday.

Well, I think that about covers what’s been happening. I’m going to try to update a little more often in the future. No. Really. I am.

my fat cat puking his guts out 2 feet from my bed! It woke me up from a sound sleep and I sat straight up in bed. I reached over and whacked the hubster and scared the crap out of him. He thought something bad was happening. I tried to explain to him that something bad was happening but he didn’t buy it. So at 2:30 this morning I’m flipping on lights and doing my best hurdler impression over the piles of cat puke to get something to clean it up with. Not only had the cat left a huge pile 2 feet from my bed, but there was more in the hallway and then the entire second step down on the staircase was covered. Try hurdling over that while still half asleep. It only took us about 10 minutes to clean it all up (we’ve had so much practice that we are possibly the fastest Pit Crew in cat puke clean-up). After all was said and done, I couldn’t get back to sleep so now I’m tired and cranky. Not a good combo.

In knitting news, I must rave about my wonderful hubster! Over the 4th of July weekend we went “up north” and he actually took me to several yarn stores, went in said yarn stores and picked out sock yarn for another pair of socks for him! Yarn pr0n can be found here along with some pics of finished socks. As I was browsing the photo album this morning before writing this post I realized that I neglected to photograph the cabled toe-up socks that I’m working on. So that will have to wait for another post (which will hopefully be sooner than later).

We’ve been on a few camping trips in the last month and you can see pictures of our trips here and here. I would have included pictures in this post but I didn’t get them uploaded to my server and I can’t do it at work. We don’t have any more camping trips planned until August when we will be visiting the hubster’s mom down in Indiana. Til then, I’ll be catching up on housework and trying to knit up some of that lucious yarn!

So much to blog about so little time. I have been extremely busy these past couple of weeks. We went on our first camping trip, my brother got married and things are turned upside down at work.

First off, camping. We went to Luddington State Park two weekends ago and man was it cold! We ate every meal inside the camper because it was too cold to eat outside. Saturday was a nice day and it did warm up to around 60F. We rode our bikes out to the lighthouse and all around the campground for a total of almost 8 miles. It rained on our cookout Saturday night and we ended up playing games inside the camper. I was sure glad for the furnace and the heated mattress as it was pretty chilly at night. Our next trip is in two weeks and I’m sure it will be much warmer!

Last weekend we drove to North Carolina for my brother’s wedding. It was a beautiful wedding and it was great to see my family! I got to see some aunts and uncles that I haven’t seen in a long time. We had a great time but I’ve been really tired all week. There are so many stories I could write about but my mind isn’t letting me.

A few weeks ago at work, 5 people were fired. It was totally crazy! So we’ve been shorthanded and busy. They have now hired on some replacements but now they are switching everyone around to different campuses. I’m back where I started in the 1/4 mile long building. I don’t mind that campus too much but the guys there are really crude and it’s like a frat house or worse. I spoke with my supervisor and he assured me that he was aware of the issue and was going to be making some changes. So I’m hoping that it won’t be a hostile working environment.

Today we finished up some landscaping that hubby started two months ago. I have to take some pictures and get them posted (along with pictures from camping and the wedding). Hubby strained his back so I did a lot of the work. It looks really nice and I’m glad we finally finished it.

Well, I just wanted to let you all know that I’m still alive (if anyone still reads this thing). I’ve got some finished socks that I also need to take pictures of and get posted. The fun never ends!