The Knitter of Shiny Things Knits and Spins!

Hat! In the yarn called for in the pattern!

2010-12-13T17:45:00.006-05:00

I know that I haven't posted in forever. I had the semester from hell as well as infinite a cappella rehearsals. So I did very little knitting, and what I did knit, I didn't photograph.

Until now.

I made a hat as a Channukah present for my boyfriend. I finished it last night and gave it to him today.

Miraculously, it fits him, and he loves it. It's still wet from the blocking I did last night. I just put it on my own head, which is smaller than his head, but I still might have stretched it a bit too much. But it's fine.

The pattern is Knotty but Nice, and I actually used the Cascade 220 Superwash that it called for (though not in the green that they used). I don't think I've ever made a pattern in the yarn that it called for before. It wasn't intentional; I was at Mind's Eye looking for a worsted weight medium blue yarn, and saw this yarn, and realized it was the yarn from the pattern.

I'm very pleased with how it came out, and I really enjoyed knitting this pattern.

I guess dye really can go bad

2010-10-14T09:28:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I went on a dyeing spree; it had been the first time I had dyed wool in 2 months. Between renovations in what serves as my studio, the Jewish holidays, and the beginning of school, I haven't had much time or space to dye anything. (I haven't even done that much knitting, for that matter.)

Whenever I dye wool, I mix up the colors in small amounts in tupperware containers, and use sponge brushes to apply the dyes. Often there will be some extra dye. I keep that extra dye in the tupperwares, with the lids on of course, and save it for the next time I dye wool.

Normally, this works just fine, but in one of my dyes there was a not so pleasant surprise:

(I had a lot of trouble getting my camera to focus; this was the best I could do.)

Yeah, that's mold. Fortunately, only two of my dyes were affected, and I wasn't too thrilled with either of the colors (the other was this grey-blue thing).

So don't expect your dyes to last forever.

And at some point I'll update with things that are prettier than moldy dye.

Maybe if this blog entry is witty enough...

2010-08-15T19:06:00.004-05:00

One of my yarns was featured on a blog yesterday:

Treasury Hunt Saturday.

(I had featured her bead in a treasury a long time ago.)

Also, I'm finally back to dyeing wool. I had to stop for a couple of weeks because I injured my back. I haven't taken photos yet (I dyed them on Friday) but I'll probably take them tomorrow, since I have the day free.

Here are some from the previous batch:

Not Remotely Steampunk: (From here. (Warning: this part of the website is SFW, but there are also a lot of NSFW things on Regretsy.))

Parrot Riding a Tricycle:

Maybe if this Roving Name is Witty Enough, Someone Will Buy it (see this xkcd):

I'm not sure how I'm going to top those for names. (There was also one called "All The Things", which I named so you could say you've spun all the things. It sold to someone who wanted to spin all the things. So it proves that if you give your roving a witty enough name, someone will indeed buy it.) I guess I just need to wait until I'm sleep deprived enough to be creative. Or ask purpleshiny when she's really sleep deprived, since that seems to work rather well. (The first and third roving here were all my own in the naming, she helped with the Parrot Riding a Tricycle, though I came up with the tricycle part.)

Also, I'm almost done with my shawl. And this past Monday I bought a bunch of yarn at Webs in Northampton, MA. If I'm sufficiently un-lazy with the photography, maybe there will be some yarn pics in the near future.

Featured crafter

2010-07-15T20:42:00.002-05:00

I is a featured crafter!.

Also, crafter is totally a word, despite what Mozilla's spell checker says.

Not the best lighting, but...

2010-07-11T17:29:00.002-05:00

Alpaca!
3 boxes of it!
In my basement!

Of course, it's been there for a while now. And while dealing with the sad wool, I've been ignoring it for a while. Which is probably not so good. I need to do a ton of carding. I think there are like 7-8 fleeces in there.

In other news, my craft show didn't go so well. I barely broke even. But since then I sold 2 skeins of brown alpaca to a friend last weekend, and a roving to someone on Etsy this morning. Maybe things are picking up.

Advanced fixing of Sad Roving

2010-06-21T00:13:00.007-05:00

A couple of days ago, I wrote this post on the HRSFAns Crafts Blog about roving that I accidentally felted, but found a way to save. It involved infinite pre-drafting, and would have to either be sold as yarn, or super-discounted bargain roving where I had the chance to instruct the person on what to do with the damn thing.

I found out two things since then:
1. The felting wasn't really my fault. Our house has 2 washing machines, and apparently they leak heat. Someone was washing a load of laundry while I was spin-cycling my roving. The heat is what did it, and not my stupidity.

2. There's a better solution for dealing with the wool. At least for me. I have a drum carder! It can deal with stuff like this. So last night I tried feeding the wool to the drum carder. I learned the hard way that you still need to pre-draft it a bit before the carder will accept the wool. However, once you do, it works really well.

So here's what you do.

1. Do some predrafting.

2. Feed the stuff into the carder. Be sure to adhere to the safety warnings it comes with. Like keeping your hands clear.

3. Once you feed it in, start cranking. The small drum will take up the stuff and put it onto the big drum.

Whee, your carder is starting to fill up. Yay!

4. Take it off the carder. You could end here, and have a batt that looks like this:

Or you could

5. put it through again for more blended colors and get this:

So I have one of each now so I can compare how they spin. I think I like the less carded one better, but if the other spins dramatically better, I'll have more blended batts in the future. Also, my batts go really well with Dominion Seaside:

So the reason why this is so exciting is that now I can sell them as batts instead of having to spin them all. They probably won't all be done in time for the show (where I should focus on getting as much yarn spun as I can) but could later go on Etsy.

Also, the craft show is in less than a week. Here's the link, for anyone who is local to Boston or will be around next weekend:

http://www.masscraftmarket.org/

Preview

2010-06-06T21:40:00.003-05:00

I dyed a bunch of things on Tuesday and Wednesday, which I have yet to list on Etsy, since I need to name them and whatnot. But I figured I'd give you all a preview of some of them:

Also, I spent the day carding and spinning. I'm hoping to get a bunch of skeins done between now and the craft show, though it's seeming less likely, considering the craft show is in 3 weeks. A skein a day would give me 21 skeins, but I doubt I can be that productive, especially once my classes start up. I'll have a lot of roving to sell, but I feel like there are more knitters in the world than there are spinners, and that the yarn will sell better. But I can always offer to do a custom spinning job if people wanted to commission me to spin up one of my rovings.

Also, carding until you injure yourself is not a good idea.

German Wool

2010-05-30T01:48:00.004-05:00

I got back from my week and a half long Europe trip on Thursday afternoon. It was a trip in which I bought few souvenirs, but I did manage to visit a yarn store in Germany.

The first two skeins are sock yarn from Italy, the second two are handspun/hand dyed local yarn from Germany.

There were so many pretty things in the store, and part of me wishes I had bought more, but I think what I got is sufficient, considering that I had to get it back to the States. Had we more time, I would have gone back to the store with my mom, but other things ended up taking forever, so no second visit for me. Oh well.

And of course, by bringing extra projects, I ensured that I would not actually finish the Traveling Woman Shawl. I'm near the end of repeat 3 of chart a, and there are only 2 charts (a repeats as many times as you'd like/have the yarn for, b is the border). I'm definitely doing a 4th repeat of it, but I'm not sure if I have the yarn for more than that. I really don't want to run out of yarn. Maybe 600 yards actually isn't enough...

Two Treasuries

2010-05-14T09:37:00.004-05:00

Treasury East is my new best friend. You can make a treasury whenever you want, you can make as many as you want, and they stay there as opposed to disappearing in 2-3 days. Of course, this leads to there being over 10,000 treasuries now (I think) and there being some with no items in them. People should really delete their treasuries when they stop having items in them. I probably would be in favor of the treasuries lasting for 4 months and then getting deleted so as not to be too overwhelming, or maybe capping the number of treasuries each seller can have.

Anyways, I have 2 treasuries up right now, one I made about a week ago, and one I made yesterday:

Dragons:

No Two People are Not on Fire (awww):

I think I might have created the second one solely because I thought that would be the best name for a treasury, ever. (It's a reference to this Strong Bad's E-mail)

In other news, I'm going to Europe on Monday (France and Germany) for a period of 10 days. The most time-consuming part of packing for me is figuring out what knitting/spinning projects to bring. The Traveling Woman shawl is going pretty quickly; I'm done with the center, and am now on repeat 2 of chart A. (There are 2 charts: chart A, which is the one that gets repeated x number of times, and chart B, which is the border. The person who made the pattern used 300 yards and did chart A twice. I want a larger shawl than that and have 600 yards of yarn, so I was thinking of doing chart A 4 times, maybe 5 if I think I have enough yarn. I would hate to run out before the end.) And chart A has 12 rows. So I think there's a good chance I could finish while I'm there.

Details of knittingness: the flight there is 7 hours, the flight back is 8. (I might sleep some of that time, but certainly not all of it.) Wednesday and Thursday are the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, so I won't be knitting then, and I also won't be knitting on Shabbat, so that leaves about 5 actual days of knitting, though I'll be doing other things as well (such as attending a wedding). But there will be a lot of transit time while in Europe.

I don't have another project I'm actively working on. I have a cabled scarf that I hardly work on, but don't want to bring, and a big Dr. Who-like scarf made of crazy yarns, but that one is too big. So I need a new project.

I'm also almost done spinning the More Purple yarn for my Etsy shop, so wouldn't bring that. Nor do I really have time to dye something else before I go. I suppose I could spin things for me.

Too much thinking. I probably just need to get over myself and start a new project. Usually I'm in the opposite situation, with a bunch of things going at once and taking forever to finish them since there are so many. At a certain point I used my magical willpower skills to finish things, and now I have this.

Maybe I'll bring the yarn for another shawl. You can never have too many hand-knit shawls, right?

10 sponge brushes

2010-04-30T13:50:00.003-05:00

I like to use sponge brushes when I dye roving or yarn. They're good at soaking up the dye and transferring it onto the fiber. However, after a few uses and cleanings, the foam top starts to come off, and then you have to fight the brush to get it back on and stay there. This starts to get annoying. The brushes are very cheap, though, so it's not such a big deal for me.

For me, the brushes are actually free, because my dad owns a hardware store. It's quite a useful thing. I was going to go to the store last weekend when I was in RI (which is where the store is), but we ended up not visiting the store while I was there. So I called my dad and asked if he could send me 10 sponge brushes.

I got the package today, and opened it up. And there were 48 sponge brushes!!!

(That's just the top layer)

I guess this was just a case of them. I'm set for a really long time. Yay!

Also, 29.5 lbs of wool, since I never put up the pictures:
And since the yarn desk has morphed a bit, I took new photos, though they are sad, night time, badly-lit photos:

And finally, the shawl I'm working on. I got this yarn from Enchanted Knoll Farm and am in love with it:
This is before I started the lace part. I'm only 4 rows into the lace, but it's pretty easy. Maybe I'll have a new shawl soon.

More purple

2010-04-14T19:50:00.003-05:00

This past Thursday I managed to do some dyeing for the first time in several weeks. The new batch will be on Etsy soon (once I finish the backlog of work I need to do for library school, and catch up on sleep after last night's all-nighter).

I decided on cool colors because it had been a while since I had dyed cool colors. Also, I realized I was severely lacking in the purple department. I dyed 3 purple rovings, though one will probably turn into purple yarn, for a bit of diversity.

I like how this batch turned out. Hopefully other people will like it, too.

In which the Knitter of Shiny Things almost wins the Vericon art show

2010-03-24T19:11:00.003-05:00

What could be more awesome than a laundry rack full of yarn and roving?
This is what I brought with me to the Vericon art show.

Side 1:

Side 2:

And a view from the inside:

[Insert Wings Here]:

I managed to finish the skein I had been working on in time to bring it with me to the art show. I called it "[Insert Wings Here]" because most of the Vericon art has wings on it, and none of mine did, so I had to fix that.

I ended up selling 3 rovings and the [Insert Wings Here] yarn. I was only second to John Kaufmann for how much money's worth of art I sold. Though unfortunately this was due to not that many people buying art this year.

But 4 items is a lot for one art show for me, especially when I was already going to the con, and entering the art show only cost $5. For minimal effort I managed to get a few sales, and also lots of people admiring the shinyness.

Weather win

2010-03-16T17:24:00.003-05:00

After 3 full days of non-stop downpours, it finally stopped raining some time last night. And today there was sun. And because of daylight savings time, when I got home at 5:30 it was still sunny out. Thus I could photograph my new wool on the porch instead of using the makeshift light box, which is made of sad. It does the job, but natural lighting gives me far better results.

So now I have pictures for the new update to the Etsy shop. I haven't added new wool in a while. But soon I'll be adding tons of wool, once my 27lbs of merino comes in. Yes, I did order 27 lbs of wool. It was with free shipping! How could I not?

It's a tie!

2010-03-14T21:08:00.003-05:00

Because Riv was lazy about blocking her shawl, I was able to catch up. I cast of last night, and then tonight we both blocked our shawls:

Riv's is on the left, mine is on the right. I actually cast off too tightly, but I didn't want to re-do it. So my shawl is less pointy than hers. But it's okay, because it's done and I'm happy, and everyone who saw it today really liked it.

Now I'm in the annoying stage where I don't have any knitting projects going. I was concentrating on the shawl because I wanted it to be finished so I could wear it. But now winter is coming to an end, so I'm less motivated to make myself the warmer hat that I'd like to have. I might make another shawl, but I'm not sure I want to do that yet. And I'm a bit discouraged with socks because I tried to make a Hedera, but it ended up being too loose even on small needles, because my feet are small. I want to make socks with an actual pattern, since those are more interesting than plain socks, but that involves deciding on one first.

And I could start my sweater, but that's not such a portable project. I should probably start it anyways.

Maybe I'll just stick with the drop spindle for now, and spin up the baby llama I dyed for myself. Or sit at my wheel and spin the wool I pre-drafted. But the wheel is really not portable.

Must find project!

I has a treasury

2010-03-11T16:47:00.004-05:00

It's a treasury!

It's really hard to get an Etsy treasury. You need to know when enough lists will expire so that the number is down to less than 333. Then you have to be at the site and click to create it as soon as it opens up. They let everyone who is there in time create one, and then the number of lists goes up to ~900 or something ridiculous.

However, they do have a tool called Poster Sketch that allows you to prepare a treasury in advance, and will automatically save what you put in. Of course, there's no actual link to it from the main site; it is hidden inside a tutorial on how to make a treasury.

Seriously, Etsy, why don't you have a link to the poster sketch?

Hopefully people will look at my treasury and buy stuff from it (especially my yarn and Riv's earrings). Some of the things in my poster sketch actually were purchased between when I created the list and when I posted it, so I had to put in alternates. Maybe my list is good luck!

Screen shot since the treasury will disappear on Saturday evening:

In which the Knitter of Shiny Things loses the Knitting Olympics

2010-03-02T18:49:00.002-05:00

I had intended on doing the Knitting Olympics this year. I was going to spin up this lovely baby llama roving that I dyed myself (Ravelry link) and knit an Alienor sweater (also a Ravelry link).

For the sweater, my main goal was just to cast on, because I've never knitted a sweater before and once I cast on it would become a lot easier for me to actually knit it.

However, life got in the way, and I wasn't even able to complete that modest goal. I had to finish a pair of gloves which were a birthday present for a friend. Her birthday was February 12, but I didn't finish them until last Wednesday. Part of this is because I actually had her try on the first glove a billion times so I could make sure everything was sized correctly. I wasn't using a pattern and I wanted them to fit perfectly, since what's the point of custom handmade gloves if they don't fit perfectly? Part of it was also when I was trying to decide whether it would be better to have the present be a surprise or to have the gloves fit perfectly. I asked her boyfriend, who said either would work, so I ended up sacrificing the surprise in favor of the fit. After all, a surprise is a short-term thing, while those gloves will last for a really long time. I definitely made the right decision.

(The second glove went much more quickly since it was the exact same thing as the first.)

So I never ended up casting on for the sweater. I should really get around to doing that. I really want to make my own sweaters, because I'm just not finding ones in stores that I actually like. And the sweaters that I own are getting to be too big, since I used to be a medium and now I'm a small. I really do need to make my own sweaters.

In other news, I might actually still win the Great Shawl Race that I thought I lost. One a technicality. Riv hasn't blocked her shawl yet. If I finish mine and block it before she does, then I totally win.

More info on the wool

2010-01-29T15:14:00.006-05:00

It turns out that the woman who owns the 3 sheep has two breeds, Lincoln and something starting with a B that my mom couldn't remember. This is what a Lincoln sheep looks like:

So in a few weeks there will be lots of wool for me! Yay!

Also, last week one of my yarns got featured in an Etsy treasury. Unfortunately the treasuries only last for 2 days, so I don't have the link any more. Or rather, I could give you a link, and you'd get an error message. But still, it was pretty cool. It got me a lot of item views. Alas, no purchases.

Gloves and wool!

2010-01-22T00:04:00.003-05:00

I finished the gloves. And they fit! Yay, gloves!

I'm not sure if i can make gloves for people whose hands I do not have frequent access to. I made these by having Riv first trace her hand and measure the wrist circumference, and then at various points I had her try them on. So the whole idea of following a pattern and having gloves fit seems foreign to me. Maybe it works for other people, but I have not tried it yet, and am kind of afraid to.

In completely unrelated news, my mom called me tonight; it turns out one of her coworkers has a farm with 3 sheep, and has wool lying around that is currently being unused. So I can have it for free! I'll have to card it myself, but I have a drum carder, which I haven't use much yet, but I want to try it out. Hopefully the wool will be of good quality, and then I could sell batts or yarn in my Etsy store. Or I could at least spin it for myself and have a sweater or something. (I didn't bother asking what kind of sheep, since my guess is my mom wouldn't have known the answer. I guess I can ask her to ask the coworker.)

Yarn Desk

2010-01-19T13:32:00.002-05:00

I have a lot of yarn and fiber. The majority of it is in a bunch of huge bins up in my closet. However, I also have a desk downstairs. This is what it currently looks like:

Most of the stuff there is spun and/or dyed by me. I also have some leftover dyes from last session which sit in tupperware containers on top.

I hadn't intended it to become a yarn desk, but as I worked on projects I started leaving stuff there, and it's also right near where I dye things, so gradually stuff accumulated until the point where I decided that it was, in fact, a yarn desk. I'm not sure where I'm going to do work once classes start, but it isn't going to be here.

In which the Knitter of Shiny Things loses the Great Shawl Race

2010-01-18T01:30:00.003-05:00

Some time in November, Riv wanted to make a lace shawl, and had me print out some patterns for her, since she lacks a printer. She decided to make the Northern Lights shawl. The pattern was actually pretty easy, and so I decided that I, too, would make this shawl.

So I cast on, already a couple of weeks behind Riv. Much unlike me, Riv likes to work on one knitting project at a time. I, on the other hand, was working on a bunch of spinning commissions (see previous post), a hat that was a Channukah present for a friend, a sock, a cowl, and gloves for Riv (which I'm almost finished with).

I'm about halfway through chart 2. Here's a kinda blurry photo of it, taken recently:

Riv just finished the shawl today, minus blocking, since our blocking wires have not arrived in the mail yet. So I have lost the race. I knew it was a losing battle, what with the head start on her part and the zillion other projects on my part, but still, I wish I could have done a little better. After all, she has a job and I'm still unemployed and haven't started library school yet. Shouldn't I be spending all my free time knitting?

Nope. I do actually have a life outside of knitting, and outside of the shawl. Now that she's finished hers, there's less of a rush on mine. I'm hoping to finish the gloves tomorrow.

And I dyed a bunch of things on Friday, and will photograph them at some point in the near future.

Lots of spinning

2009-12-29T17:06:00.004-05:00

About a month ago, Riv was at a craft show. In addition to her shiny jewelry, she also took along a bunch of my yarn and roving to sell. And my business cards came a few days before the show, so I gave a bunch of those to her as well.

Unfortunately, no one bought any of my stuff, but some people took my business card, and one person was interested in commissioning me to spin up some of my rovings.

So I contacted the woman who was interested in the yarn a few days later, and she commissioned me to spin up three rovings.

Peacock Feathers:

More Leaves:

and Jewels:

I think Jewels was my favorite, and it was really nice to be able to spin with it.

So now they are pretty yarn. Huzzah!

I still have more things to spin! And my last dyeing session had some felted rovings, so in order to salvage them I might spin them myself and sell the yarn, since the yarn will be fine (though the spinning will be annoying). Or maybe I'll give it all away to my friends who are spinners. There are only 4 of them, so it's not so bad.

Etsy update coming soon

2009-12-08T21:05:00.005-05:00

I did a ton of dyeing last night. Here are some of the finished products.

Most of it is going to the Etsy shop, though I did dye one roving which will turn into a skein of yarn that was a charity prize, and there's one that will be gloves or a hat or something for a friend, and there's also baby llama that I got for myself. It came yesterday as I was between batches of dyeing, so it ended up getting dyed.

The ones below will go in the shop. I'm going to wait until I can get pictures with natural lighting before I put them up, since these pictures don't do the fibers justice.

[Not sure what to name this one]

Straw into Gold

Purple Shiny
(She's my house mate, and the colorway would be something she'd spin with, so I named it after her.)

Peacock

I think I dyed 13 things total, which is my largest dyeing session ever. There were 3 batches! 3!

Interior Decorating Revolution!

2009-10-28T21:43:00.003-05:00

We finally got around to putting up the artwork in my house today. We have a sad common room, which is less sad now that it has a giant couch and a TV table, but still lacked color.

So we added some paintings:

However, the room still lacks color. Specifically, the trim on the windows is really sad. Some of the paint is peeling off. So either we could cover it up with curtains, or we could paint the trim.

But what color(s)?

We lacked paint chips, however, I had a full palette of colors. Behold, interior decorating with wool!

Maybe we could do purple:

or red:

or turquoise-ish-purple-blue-something-or-other:

or light green:

I think you can probably do the same thing with different colors of yarn. Now you don't need to go get paint chips! And wool is so much softer than paint chips. Maybe we should just put the wool up. Except then I can't spin it...

We still haven't decided what color to paint the trim or what kind of curtains we want, but there might be some purple. Also, our floor is sad, too, and needs a big purple rug. Maybe we'll even paint the ceiling fan.

New Roving-- Fall colors

2009-10-25T22:06:00.002-05:00

I dyed a lot of roving last week, which is now up in the Etsy shop. I decided to focus on warm colors, since my last batch was primarily cool colors.

Here they are, hanging out to dry on the porch:

More leaves 2:

Fire and Water:

More Leaves 1 (I think)

I actually dyed 3 rovings in similar colors, and called them all "More Leaves!" More Leaves 1 and 2 are in the shop, while I kept More Leaves 3 for myself, partially because I wanted it and partially because there was major blue spillage and thus I don't think it's worthy of selling. Same with the yellow orange one. But I have use for yarn in these colors, so I don't mind spinning it. And there are now 13 items in my shop, which I think is a respectable amount for the moment.

I also dyed a bunch of smaller rovings for myself on Thursday which I have not yet photographed. One of them might become a pair of gloves for a friend, and the rest I have no clue what to do with, other than turn them into pretty yarn and admire how pretty the yarn is. Actually, I think that's a pretty good plan. Don't you?

Whee, it's roving!

2009-10-21T12:13:00.004-05:00

I've dryed and braided all of the roving and yarn now, and put it in the Etsy shop.

Behold my awesomeness:

Springtime

Mr. Biv

Poseidon

HRFSA

Summer Breeze

Jewels

I did some more dyeing on Monday night, with orange, yellow and red dyes. Unfortunately there was a bit of blue spillage (I was making one roving of orange and blue) with the result of spots of blue on the other roving. I might be able to salvage it. If not, I can either keep it all for myself or remove the blue, spin it into yarn, and sell the yarn instead. It's still drying, so we'll see what happens.

Dyeing

2009-10-08T20:30:00.003-05:00

Today I experimented with dyeing roving to hopefully sell in my Etsy shop (which I just created this week). I bought 7lbs of merino wool on the internets, and I've been dyeing it in units of 4 oz., since that's what people usually have it in when they're selling hand-dyed roving.

My first batch came out darker than I would have liked, but apparently it's still pretty. I learned that I need to dilute the dyes more.

Also, I learned that the colors will blend a bit, and this yarn does not have the variegation I wanted it to have but oh well:

But batch 2 came out much better. Whee!

I have to wait for them to dry so I can properly photograph them, and then I can put them in the store. I hope people will like them and buy them and make pretty yarn out of them.

Here are 2 skeins of yarn that are from the fleece from my friend's alpaca farm. They actually do already exist in the etsy shop.

Also my banner is sad. It's a placeholder banner. I'll make a real one eventually (or pay someone else who has better skills than me).

Fun things

2009-08-25T17:40:00.003-05:00

I'm not sure whether or not I've mentioned that I have a goal of making myself enough hand-knit socks so I can just wear hand-knits. So far I have 2 pairs. This is the second, which I did a couple of weeks ago. No pattern, just ribbing at the cuff and stockinette for the rest. Kinda boring, but the yarn was pretty and I didn't have to pay attention to what I was doing. And they were a quick knit. And I like wearing them

I'm working on another pair, Sunday Swing. I'm at the toe of the first sock, so I might finish it tonight depending on what else I want to do.

I've also been doing a lot of spinning lately. I've made 2 skeins of the white alpaca, one of which I dyed, the other of which I'm waiting until me and my housemate have the supplies to make a bunch of colors at once and paint the rovings. I haven't taken a picture of the dyed yarn (I couldn't find my camera for a week, though now it's back) but here's an undyed skein, pre washing:

Upon washing the skeins I learned that they really are, in fact, pure white. I also learned that I need to be more careful, since the yarn felted and that was not fun to sort out. I probably can't sell those skeins, but I might use them to make myself a pair of gloves.

Here's a skein I did a while back. It is pretty, and I have no clue what to do with it (180ish yarns of worsted-ish weight yarn):

And finally, here is one of my most recent creations, a 40 foot I-cord rope, made out of alpaca from the alpaca farm (mostly second cuts, since I wanted to save the good stuff for things that can be worn):

I skeined it and tied it up, felted it, put it in a box, and sent it to Virginia:

And the recipient loves it. Yay, rope! (Now I need to think of an even weirder project.)

Blogging again!

2009-07-29T14:25:00.004-05:00

I've been a bad blogger. I haven't updated in forever. Part of it is the fact that there are probably only 2 or so people who read it. Part of it was being busy. Part of it was laziness.

However, I've gotten a lot of knitting done, especially since I finished school at the end of May and graduated in June.

Many months ago I started a pair of mittens, having never made them before. I started off with a pattern and did my usual thing of not checking gauge, which usually works out fine but this time was going to turn out in gigantic mittens. Not wanting to take out what I had started, I thought of a better solution: thrumming!

Thrumming is when you take a tuft of wool and knit it into something. The link above is a great tutorial by the Yarn Harlot. It results in a layer of fluffy wool inside the garment, which is really soft and warm.

I used some of the leftover second cuts of alpaca that I had never spun up. It worked surprisingly well. Here are the finished mittens:

Another fun project I had was making 2 socks at the same time on the same set of double-pointed needles. I really should have taken pictures of the socks in progress, because the final picture is just a normal-looking pair of socks:

But i really did do them at the same time. I alternated the colors so that I could easily tell the socks apart. Switching colors proved to be a bit difficult in that it was all to easy to start up knitting with the wrong yarn and knit the socks together. But I figured it out. The other mistake was me not turning the socks inside out to do the 3-needle bind off. But they are baby socks for charity and I'm sure that the baby and/or charity will not mind.

Here's the tutorial from Knitty, which is what I used:

Extreme Knitting!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I now also have infinite amounts of alpaca to spin for my friend who has an alpaca farm. I'm spinning up all 7 fleeces and I get to keep half of the yarn. I'm currently spinning up the white stuff, which is really soft.

When an alpaca is sheared the fleece has 2 parts: the blanket cut which is the back and sides/all the shiny fleece, and the second cuts, which come from the legs, neck, etc. The second cuts are a lot smaller and not as soft, and are of lesser quality. However, they are still soft and spinable.

(The yarn in this post comes from second cuts.)

While I was working with the second cuts for the thrumming, I was actually wondering whether or not they really were second cuts, since they were so soft. Then I spun some of the blanket fleece. Then I spun up the rest of the second cuts that were leftover from the thrumming process, and as soon as I started spinning I could feel the difference. Blanket fleece is so much nicer! I may end up spinning more second cuts if I ever finish the infinite amounts of blanket fleece, but I might have more than enough yarn anyways and not bother and just use it for things like thrumming.

Also, I'm thinking of getting into dyeing fleeces and selling roving/batts on the internets. I might start with some of the alpaca, or playing around with cheap white yarn or something. Hopefully I'll make shiny things that I can post about.

I'll try to be better about the whole blogging thing. I have zillions of things I've made, so there's no reason not to post about them.

Still Here

2009-02-24T12:54:00.003-05:00

Although my life has been insane for the past couple of months, I'm still here, still knitting. I've been working on a few things. First: a hat for my grandmother that only took me a couple of hours to make since I used big yarn and size11 needles:

Then a Celtic cable scarf for myself, from this pattern:

And finally, a pair of socks for myself. I'm almost done with the second sock. These will be the 4th pair of socks I've made, the second pair of adult-sized socks I've made, and the first pair of socks that are actually for me.

I made the cable pattern myself- I had cast on 44 stitches, with k2p2 ribbing to start, and then realized I wanted it to be more interesting than just stockinette for the body of the sock. So I charted out a cable, and came up with this:

It actually isn't so hard, other than the lack of ws rows, which makes me actually have to keep track of whether or not I'm on a cable row. So I'm not sure whether or not I'd use this pattern again. When I'm less lazy I may post a pattern, because even if keeping track of things is annoying, it did come out nicely.

FOs

2008-12-24T19:48:00.004-05:00

I've been working on a few projects, and actually got some finished. This is the hat that I posted about a while back. I actually finished it around Thanksgiving, but it took me a while to get around to photographing it.

Now I'm working on a scarf to match it. I'm playing around with the idea of doing a modified Clapotis scarf, though I might decide to scrap it for something else. It doesn't look like much yet.

I finished spinning and plied a skein of yarn on Saturday night as a gift for a friend I was visiting on Sunday. It's merino, tencel, and silk, navajo plied, approximately worsted weight, 104 yards.

And a dice bag I did for a secret Santa a week ago:

And finally, and most impressively, my first pair of adult-sized socks. (Or 2 shots of the first sock, since the second looks the same and I didn't bother taking a picture of it before i gave them away.)

They were for a friend whose birthday is on Christmas, so they were wrapped separately, and the Christmas one was filled with candy.

And now I'm making myself a pair with this yarn, which I bought a year ago:

http://www.etsy.com/view_transaction.php?transaction_id=6597260

I'm in love with sock-making. I want to make myself enough socks that I could wear hand-knit only.

Willpower

2008-11-18T15:41:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I did something I've never done in my life before.

I returned a skein of yarn.

A couple of weeks ago I bought 3 skeins of Rowan felted tweed yarn in order to make a pair of wristwarmers. I figured 2 would probably be enough but I should buy a third just in case. The yarn store that I bought the yarn from has a policy that you can return yarn with a receipt within 60 days of purchase.

I used 2 skeins together to make a thicker yarn. I knitted one wrist warmer. Then I knit a second. And there was a lot of leftover yarn on those two skeins. Certainly I did not need the third.

Finished wrist warmers:

And yet, it's not like there was anything wrong with the skein. Normally it would have entered my stash. (Or I would have given it to a friend.) I'm sure I could find a project for it, eventually, just like I can find projects for all the unused yarns in my stash. But as of now I already have more projects than I can complete by the end of the year, and with the things I need to make, it will be a while before I start anything else. Also, I've been sick for the past 2 weeks and haven't been working, and I'm taking the next 2 weeks off as well so I can recover, and thus I don't have that disposable income. (Right now my job is my justification for expensive yarn purchases.) And I'm going into the real world next year, where I'll have to be financially independent and stuff, and thus should start saving money. Not that I buy yarn that often. But still, it's the principle.

So I went to the store and I returned the third, unused skein of Rowan felted tweed. I had paid $10 for it. Those $10 ended up going towards an $18 skein of sock yarn that I'm using to make a pair of socks for a friend for the holidays. (Not that I'll actually finish them in time. I still need to get his shoe size so I can get started...)

Though conversely, I could have used the same logic I used for making myself return the yarn for buying more yarn instead. At least in that I'm sick and haven't been working. Being sick gives me the right to buy myself expensive yarn. The yarn is a reward for being sick. Or compensation. Or something.

But really, I'm not sure what I would have used the yarn for. I also still have the leftover yarn from the 2 skeins I did use. They might be used in a pair of mittens I need to make (which I think will combine a few yarns). But that third skein was/is unnecessary. I think I made the right decision.

Here's the leftover yarn from the 2 skeins:

Finally, a detailed shot of the cabling, just for fun:

Productive again

2008-10-31T13:20:00.004-05:00

I've actually been getting lots of knitting done now that the semester has started. 2 weeks ago I finished the alpaca scarf from the previous post, and now I'm working on some smaller projects.

This is a baby hat I made for charity:

Here's a side view:

The pattern came from here:Presto Baby Hat

And I'm also working on an Irish Hiking Hat for my friend who is in England:

I'm also working on a new scarf for myself, which will be like the alpaca scarf of awesome, except with green, and not as long as the other scarf (which is about 7 feet long!!!!) My old scarf seems thin and flimsy, so this new one will be thick and will keep me warm. Hopefully I'll finish it before it gets too ridiculously cold out.

Appreciating my crafting

2008-09-18T23:03:00.003-05:00

When I first started knitting 5 years ago, when people complimented my projects, I usually would respond saying that it's really not that hard and I wasn't doing anything special and anyone could do it if they tried.

Even when I started making more complex things, I still maintained that my knitting was nothing to write home about. My stitches were even, but aren't everyone's stitches even? (Apparently not.) I'm knitting on 4 needles? Really, it's not that hard. "Ooh, that's such pretty yarn!" I have good taste in yarn. But really, how much creativity do you need?

(The exception to all of this is compliments from the people I made things for. Of course I'm going to be happy that they liked whatever I made them, and I'm glad they appreciate)

I think I got better about accepting knitting compliments when I started spinning, since spinning is less common than knitting (though in my opinion it's not harder.) And I think at this point I'm okay with people admiring my knitting. The Celtic cable scarf I'm currently working on is the nicest thing I've ever made. And it's relatively complex.

It's about halfway done. Here's a more recent photo:

I'm really proud of it. And the person who it's for has seen me working on it, and really likes it. And he's impressed by my spinning, even though it's far from even.

Spun alpaca

2008-09-09T18:36:00.004-05:00

Remember thatmass of alpaca I got? I spent the past few weeks spinning it up, though a lot of this was done on Wednesday night, since I was desperately trying to finish it before I went away for the weekend (and would meet the person who owns the alpaca farm and would have something to show him besides just a bobbin of yarn).

I ended up with two skeins and a bit extra, though I have no clue what the yardage is...

Also, this is the other yarn, from the same alpaca, but spun by a professional:

So here's the scarf as of last evening. The bottom part is the yarn I bought, the top is the yarn I spun. I'll probably take more pictures when it gets bigger, but I wanted to post it now.

And the pattern is the Celtic Cable Neckwarmer from here. (I slightly modified it to make it wider and added a cable on each side). I was a bit intimidated at first, but it's actually a really easy chart to follow. At this point I don't even need to look at the chart that often, though it's quicker if I have it on hand to look at it rather than to figure out what cables I'm doing in a given row. But maybe eventually I'll ahev the whole thing memorized.

Drop Spindle of Awesome

2008-08-21T23:25:00.002-05:00

This is the end result of my drop spindle project. It might have taken forever, but I really enjoyed it, and the plying went really quickly. So now I have shiny yarn, which I will be mailing out tomorrow. Huzzah!

More pictures

2008-08-09T22:30:00.002-05:00

This is the shiny yarn that was on sale tht I bought in Philly for $3 a skein.

And these are the koigu mill ends:

And this is a spinning project I've been doing on my drop spindle. I'm going to ply it together on my wheel. It's merino wool:

Alpaca!!!!

2008-08-09T22:21:00.002-05:00

So a friend of mine for whom I'm making a scarf has a friend with an alpaca farm. My friend thought it would be cool if his scarf were made out of yarn from his friend's alpacas, consider he's hung out with these alpacas before.

The fleece from the first cut had already been spun, but he had stuff from the second cut, which is of lower quality, which he was willing to sell to me for a really good price assuming I could spin with it, otherwise I was to just keep it.

It came on Thursday. I tried spinning it, and it worked. Here's a shot of it in the bag:

And here it is on the table, where you can get a better idea of scale:

I love my giant mass of alpaca.

By the way, this is the roving I bought in June that I can't knit with :)

On Knitting and the Sabbath

2008-07-08T16:20:00.002-05:00

Sandy commented on my last post asking about knitting on the Sabbath and why I can't do it. I decided there was no good reason not to make this its own post, especially considering I've had little to post about as of late (since I've been doing a bad job of keeping up with my knitting projects.)

Since I'm a Divinity School student, there will be citations with links to the texts.

So in the Torah it says

7 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 8 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work; 9 but the seventh day is a sabbath unto the LORD thy God, in it thou shalt not do any manner of work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; 10 for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day; wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. (Exodus 20:7-10).

There's also the other set of 10 commandments in Deuteronomy, which has the similar

11 Observe the sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD thy God commanded thee. 12 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work; 13 but the seventh day is a sabbath unto the LORD thy God, in it thou shalt not do any manner of work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy man-servant and thy maid-servant may rest as well as thou. 14 And thou shalt remember that thou was a servant in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God brought thee out thence by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day.(Deut. 5:11-14)

So this is a bit ambiguous in that "any manner of work" is left undefined. Luckily, the Rabbis, writing several centuries later, define "work" as creative work, since God created the universe in 6 days and rested on the 7th, therefore in remembrance of that we should stop creating. There's a specific set of things that are prohibited, 39 of them, to be exact. Here is a list of them, with some explanation. Note how knitting is there.

Some things are debateable, such as electricity (which later rabbis prohibited the use of on Shabbat), or carrying an umbrella,¹ but knitting is really creative work. One might argue that knitting is relaxing and Shabbat is supposed to be a day of rest, and I would agree with that, except that I'm creating something when I knit and I'm not supposed to be creating anything.

And that is why Sabbath-observant Jews do not knit on the Sabbath.

Though I did find out that in Israel they held International Knit In Public Day on Sunday the 15th of June, though that wouldn't have helped me since I was not in Israel, and even if I did knit in public that day I was alone in my knittingness.

¹This one is a little abstract- once upon a time you used to have to put together umbrellas, much like the ones that now are on patio tables. So the assembling of it was categorized under "erecting a shelter" and carrying umbrellas was prohibited, even though you could have made it before Shabbat, since people might see it and think it was okay to put together an umbrella on Shabbat. Then they invented modern umbrellas, which don't need to be assembled. But the rabbis thought that people still might look at it and dthink you could assemble an umbrella on Shabbat. And some said that opening it was also a problem. Even if you walked around with an umbrella which had a sign on it which said "this umbrella was opened before Shabbat" the rabbis still prohibit using an umbrella. At this point I think it's just a matter of tradition and not wanting to change it, but it is a very silly law to still be following.

You can't knit with that!

2008-06-16T21:12:00.002-05:00

During my trip to Philadelphia, me and my friend GM went to no less than 4 yarn stores. We both spent a lot of money on Yarn. There was one called A Garden of Yarn which advertised on the door that it was a "crochet-friendly yarn store." That amused me. There I got a bunch of wool/mohair blend skeins that were really colorful and pretty and were on sale for $3 each. There was also this bundle of white roving. It simply said "Roving for dyeing" and was $9.90. I petted it, and it was soft, and I wasn't sure what kind of fiber it was, so I asked the store-clerk. She was a cute little old lady and she had another cute little old lady friend. I'm not sure which of them said what, so I'll assign dialogue as I see fit, and we'll pretend it's accurate.

Me: What kind of wool is this?
OL1: You can't knit with that.
Me: I know. I spin. I have a wheel at home. But I was wondering what kind of fiber it is.
OL2: Let me look it up.
OL2 looks in her book...I think it's called "roving."

I gave up after that and decided that it was soft and might be alpaca, and it was a good deal even if I don't dye, and I would buy it. So I did.

There were also many Koigu mill ends at Rosie's Yarn Cellar for $0.24/gram. I initially thought this was a better deal than normal koigu, but it's actually the same price as a typical $12 50 gram skein. But the advantage is you can get different colors in small quantities. I bought some for a dice bag and for a pair of socks.

There was also Loop, which gives out really nice reusable shopping bags. I got three skeins of a laceweight silk/wool blend in royal blue for a shawl.

I'd post pictures, but right now my camera flash isn't in sync with the shutter, and my pictures end up dark unless they are taken in bright light. Thus I have to wait until daytime tomorrow. Hopefully I'll get pictures then.

Also I'm sad that I didn't get to participate in the international Knit In Public Day. It was Saturday and Saturday is Shabbat and thus I don't knit. Nor was I even in public for that matter (though that was a situational thing.) Maybe I should organize Jewish knitters for a much smaller Sabbath-Observant Knit In Public Day.

Recent FOs

2008-06-08T16:30:00.003-05:00

I finally got around to taking pictures of some of my recent finished objects today. It beats doing actual Shavuot preparation (like cleaning.)

This is my "graduation shawl" that I finished today. It's made out of recycled silk. It's all garter stitch, but the yarn works and it looks very pretty. It's a graduation shawl because I started it around graduation time last year, knit it during the ceremonies, put it away for a year and took it out around graduation time this year and also knit it during the graduation ceremonies.

This is some merino/tussah silk blend on my wheel right now. I'm finally getting good at having a consistent yarn. I think this will look very pretty when plied. As usual I have no clue what I'm going to make with it.

This is some colonial wool. I wanted it to be 1 giant skein, but my ball winder had other plans. So it's two big skeins. It's 2 ply, and I think it's dk weight, though it's not 100% even. It's for a friend of mine who just graduated. Unfortunately I finished it on Friday morning and she left Thursday evening so I'll have to mail it to her.

This is some light blue merino I was practicing drafting from the fold on. At the time I thought it was very thin, but looking at it, it's not so thin. But I have tons of the wool, so it's okay. It's the softest wool I've ever worked with, so spinning the rest will be fun when I get to it.

This is some merino fromPoppy Flower Fibers that I'm spinning on my drop spindle. So far I have 2 spindles full. When it's all spun I'll ply it on the wheel. This may take a while, though.

And that's it. I probably should get back to the laceweight shawl or to the Puppet Johns my housemate commissioned. Though now I have 49 hours of manditory non-knitting/non-spinning time. Yay for Jewish holidays which eat my life!

Not knitting related, but...

2008-05-14T13:07:00.001-05:00

I ordered another pound of dice. A friend and I were going to split it, but then we saw that they sold 2lbs of dice together, and it was a slightly better deal, so now we're each getting a pound of dice.

Pictures will be forthcoming, as soon as the dice arrive.

And yes, I am insane.

Hopefully this will be my last dice bag post for a while

2008-05-12T17:48:00.003-05:00

I eventually got unlazy enough to upload the rest of the photos, so here's the last dice bag, and a picture of all of them together.

When I presented them to my party last Sunday they seemed to like them, though the person to whom I gave the white bag was a bit confused (it's ginormous because I used hand spun yarn that was really bulky and required size 11 needles, and even though I reduced the amount of stitches in it by a lot, it still made a ginormous bag). I told him that if it seemed too big, it meant that he needed to buy more dice.

The small maroon one from my last post became my new thing to carry money, since I lost my wallet 2 weeks ago. (It sucked, but it wasn't the end of the world since most of my important cards weren't in there.) It works pretty well, though I had to put in a new drawstring because he original one broke. I guess that's what happens when you use 1ply handspun yarn, especially something really thin and one of my earliest attempts at spinning.

The shawl is not much bigger than it was before. But it's now my primary project. It requires attention, though, so it's not so ideal for class knitting. But I'm done with classes for the year! (Until the summer, that is...)

I also got to spin more golden bamboo last night, which was fun. I'm getting better at it. I still have no clue what I'm going to do with the yarn when I finish...

Also, I have the urge to buy another lb of dice. Is this a bad sign?

Why do I make so many dice bags?

2008-05-02T11:38:00.004-05:00

Apparently I make a lot of dice bags. Perhaps this has to do with my newfound D&D obsession. Multiply that for my desire to knit things for everyone I know, and you get this:

So there are 5 people in my party including me, though not including our 6th party member who doesn't exist. So I decided to make them all dice bags. The top two and the bottom one and another one not pictured are for them. They're all finished now, but I haven't had a chance to upload the other photos. The other two were made before I made the decision to have plot relevant character colored dice bags, so the red one will probably be used as a change purse for me, while the green one will sadly sit. If our 6th party member were to come into existence again, it could be his (he is plot relevantly green, though I didn't know it at the time of making this bag). But he has only been to one session out of the 8 we've had thus far; being at the 3rd session and then missing the past 5 weeks. So he really doesn't exist. I have nothing against him, but it's hard to give a dice bag to someone who doesn't exist.

My lace shawl has also been started:

It doesn't look like much yet. This is because it isn't much yet. But now that I'm done with those dice bags, I can go back to knitting it. Yay!

Productive

2008-04-15T17:44:00.005-05:00

I got into a very productive streak with my knitting during break, and finished many things including:

The Monge Blanket, made jointly with my friend for our professor, Dr. Monge.

This scarf (it's finished in real life, but this is when I had the opportunity to photograph it.) It's made with purple alpaca silk, and white alpaca, the latter of which I spun myself. The limiting factor was the white alpaca yarn, which took a while to spin, since I did it on the wheel and wasn't home very often.

And then I finished plying the silk.

Of course, that put me in the situation of having nothing to knit, and I was having trouble deciding on a project, but now I have a few things on my needles, so all is well.

I also picked up a lace shawl booklet on Sunday, so now I have shiny shawls to knit. It's called Wrapped in Comfort. The patterns are really pretty, and I would highly recommend it.

Sin and roving

2008-03-21T16:30:00.003-05:00

Once upon a time there was a Knitter of Shiny Things, who also spun Shiny Things. One day, she came upon a book on modesty (in Orthodox Judaism) which said it was forbidden for a woman to spin red wool in public, since red was a licentious color that attracted male attention, and if she spun red wool, the fibers might get on her clothing, causing men to notice her and think lustful thoughts. Being the heretic that she was, the Knitter of Shiny Things' immediate reaction was, "I must spin red wool in public now!" since clearly she was an immodest person who promoted licentiousness throughout the land. But alas, she lacked red wool.

One day, she and a friend went yarn shopping, and she found red wool. So she bought it. And spun a bit. No one seemed scandalized. (Nor did she seem to attract male attention, or any more than she would have gotten from spinning with any other color. People don't usually carry around drop spindles, so whatever you spin, they will notice.)

Anyways, she decided to go as sin for Purim (the Jewish Holiday where you dress up in costumes among other things). And obviously, spinning red wool in public is the biggest sin there is, so she brought along her drop spindle in addition to dressing in red and black and wearing red wings. Here's the red wool she used:

Also, (switching out of first person) here are the Manos wrist warmers I mentioned in my last post:

And I bought shiny roving which came today:

Manos, part II*

2008-03-17T09:42:00.002-05:00

So after I finished my Manos hat on Tuesday, I started a pair of wristwarmers. Since I had 2 skeins (though one was about 2/3 used up) I decided to do as the pattern recommended and make both at once. After a small failure with doing the front cables wrong (by starting at the beginning instead of knitting 3 first) I restarted on Thursday and finished them last night (minimal weaving in still required). I'll post pictures after I take them.

And I was able to complete one wristwarmer with the leftover yarn from the first skein without having to take any yarn from the second skein. And still there was a bit left in that skein. So theoretically I could make another hat, but I'm going to use some of the yarn to redo the top of my existing Manos hat, since it's a bit tight and I think if I add a few rows to the decrease (or in general) it should be fine. Of course, with the cable pattern I'm not sure how to add rows and keep it looking nice and not screw up the pattern too much, but I'll deal with that.

Meanwhile, the list of people I need to knit shiny things for is still growing. One I found out about Saturday night and the other just now. Ack.

*If they ever make a sequel to "Manos, the Hands of Fate" I will be very, very sad. In fact, I would posit that there was no justice in the world were such a thing to happen.

Manos, Hat of Fate

2008-03-13T13:20:00.004-05:00

In January, a friend of mine gave me 2 skeins of Manos 100% wool in turquoise. It was very squishy, but sat in my stash because I couldn't think of a project for it.

Bumming around Ravelry, I found that one of the patterns was the Yarn Harlot's Unoriginal Hat. The cables looked pretty and I had wanted to try it for some time and I had never used a chart before (the pattern also has text), so I decided to give it a knit:

Behold! Manos, hat of fate. (I always think of "Manos [the] hands of fate" whenever I see Manos yarn.) I still have a skein and a quarter left, so it will become a pair of matching wristwarmers. The Knitter of Shiny Things has matching accessories. What is the world coming to?

Also, I made a baby hat with the leftover leftover beret yarn. And now there's still leftover leftover leftover beret yarn. I should do something about that.

The baby hat was for charity, and I sent it off on Tuesday in a string of productive errands.

A story about the hat: I was working on the hat last week before and during class. While waiting for class to start one of my classmates remarks that she wants to learn how to knit, but has never been able to learn it from books and was thinking of taking a class. I told her that classes were good, but sin my experience as a summer camp knitting instructor, they can sometimes be annoying if you have too many people and need extra help and the instructor can only spend so much time with you since they have to help everyone else as well, and she might be better off with a private lesson.

Her: Do you give knitting lessons?
Me: I could...

So I am going to teach her how to knit, and get paid some monies. I've been looking around the internet and have seen classes being offered for anywhere between $12/hr- $50/hr. Most fell within the $20-$30 range. So I think I'll ask for $15, since after all, she's also a student, and a Divinity School student at that. It's reasonable, far cheaper than the class she would have signed up for, and fair to me as well. (And that's what I got paid this summer for teaching a billion kids how to knit and crochet.)

In the ideal world I would have a job teaching knitting in Cambridge this summer, but I'm more likely to get a job doing research or working in a library. At least they are both conducive to knitting.

Dice are nice

2008-03-06T01:21:00.005-05:00

When my friend told me that he needed to get more dice, I decided that I, too, needed more dice. So I went on the internets and ordered a Chessex pound-o-dice. I don't think I realized the enormity of this.

Meanwhile, at D&D on Sunday I found out that my friend really doesn't have that many dice. The dice bag is more than big enough to hold them all.

Lo and behold, my pound-o-dice came today. And they weren't kidding when they said around 100 dice. Look at them!

Aren't they pretty? So I probably have more dice than I can use. So I took the set of 7 that came with it and put it with my original set of 7 in my dice bag, and they are happily mingling. (They're the white and blue speckled ones in the lower left. The original set is the one in the pictures of the dice bag 2 posts ago). I also made myself another set of 7 from what I had.

Then I decided that my friend needed a set of 7, except that the 7th die, the d10 that goes 0 to 00 by tens, is missing since I only got one outside the complete set. Instead, he gets 2 d20s, and also 2 d6s, one with the dots and one with the numerals.

Also, I decided that since I got 24 d20s, I could easily give one to everyone in my party, even the guy who is playing a rogue assassin who tried to kill us rather than join the party like he was supposed to. Maybe I'll curse his die or something. I might also give everyone d8s, though maybe not. I rather like having d8s, since I use them for damage with my fire spells. And I have my original one, the one in the complete set, one for my random set, and then 5. And there are 5 of them.

I might also give a d20 to everyone in the Saturday party (there are 2 campaigns since 12 of us wanted to play, so 5 besides me are in my party, and then 6 are in the Saturday party. I'm friends with 5 of them, the 6th being a random person from another school whom I've never met). I'm undecided. It would leave me with 9 d20s outside of my 3 sets, which is more than I need, but then again, maybe I do need 15 d20s for something. I could instead give them d10s. Or d6s (though that would be lame. Anyone can get a d6). The d20s are rolled more often in D&D than any other type of die. But if the DM has 2 more d20s, I doubt they'll have problems.

Here is my dice bag, by the way:

Sadly, it isn't big enough to hold all these dice. Maybe each type can have its own bag. Or I can have a large bag for all of the ones not in my 3 sets.

More dice bags!

2008-03-05T00:40:00.002-05:00

I decided after the last dice bag that I needed one for myself. I made it out of the leftover yarn from the failed beret of doom. I'll post pictures when I'm less lazy.

I also finished spinning the silk, and now am going to ply it, because it is way too thin currently.

Now I'm working on a bunch of small projects. I'm a bit afraid of the sock, as I worked on it in class this morning and my hand started to hurt. This probably has to do with the fact that it's on tiny needles and is really tight. But I don't want to rip everything out and work on slightly bigger needles. The sock is the size it's supposed to be. (Well except for the not being a complete sock yet...)

*Sigh* Stupid project ADD. I should just finish something already.

Lots of knitting

2008-03-01T18:47:00.003-05:00

So the Coronet from my last post is finished. I actually ended up using another pattern for the top of the hat, since I liked the decreases better. It makes little spirals on top by having the decreases be in the same spots.

And it fits. This makes me very happy, because now I have a hat that fits. It only took me half of winter to get one...

I then started a sock. Hedera. It is shiny and I have the lace pattern memorized now, so it should go quickly once I get back to working on it. I admit, I've strayed a bit, since although I love it, I also want to work on something(s) with bigger yarn.

And also I had a WIP which had been long-abandoned, even though I was more than halfway done. Another set of Irish Hiking wristwarmers. So I went and finished those:

I spun the yarn myself. The purple was kind of large so I had to switch to bigger needles to be able to work with it. The purple is Corriedale and the green is Colonial. I had a bit of leftover yarn:

It sat happily on top of my German homework for the photo shoot. I think this was the one about Paul's sermons, and his trip to Thessalonika and Philippi.

And on Thursday night I decided to make a dice bag for a friend of mine who is DMing a D&D campaign that I am a part of. (When I tell my friends about this, I say, "Guess what I'm doing now? I'll give you a hint: it's the nerdiest thing ever." Most of them actually guess D&D first, and are surprised when they are right!) He keeps his dice in a CVS bag, which is sad. So I worked like crazy to finish it before Shabbat. And I did.

I used this pattern, size medium, though with bigger yarn and needles than called for, plus I added two rows. Yet I was still afraid it wasn't going to be big enough, because he has numerous dice. So I tried it out with my own dice:

I only have 7. But they are shiny.

So after measuring it against my dice, I thought theoretically it could be big enough, but there was still the chance that it wouldn't be. However, I still brought it to gaming last night, and he loves it, and says he needs to get more dice now. Apparently it is big enough. Yay!

And it's always nice to use up scrap yarn. Part of the reason I knit this so quickly was because it was made out of dishcloth cotton, which is not very shiny on the grand scale of shiny yarns, so I wanted to be done with it. And I could have theoretically used my big skein of one color, but I like these colors better. Plus, when you tell me that you have no favorite or least favorite color and "colors are pretty" you can expect me to do something like this.

Maybe I'll start making dice bags on commission if other people who game think they need them. First, however, I must make one for myself. And I need to buy more dice. Whee!

coming home

2008-02-08T13:10:00.000-05:00

When I came home from Israel, I was greeted by my housemate's cat. She had been up to a lot of mischief in my absence.

She is a yarn snob, and this is wool from China. It was up in my room, but apparently made its way down the stairs.

So I followed it up into my room.

And then found the original skein. Or what was left of it.

Oh well. I have 11 other skeins, and this one isn't too badly messed up.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I've been doing a lot of knitting lately, but I've also spun a bit. This is some silk that is coming out really thin, so I'll have to ply it. It's also taking forever.

The colors aren't so accurate because it was night and my flash is badly timed, but it's close enough. In reality the colors are more vibrant.

Also, there's this beret, which originally fit but quickly stretched out to gargantuan proportions. this was supposed to be a hat to make up for my hats that were too large or too wonky. Alas.

The next hat will fit. The next hat better fit. It will. If I have to knit it 20 times, it will fit.

Second sock

2008-01-01T21:42:00.001-05:00

I was in Jerusalem, knitting a sock and taking pictures. So I decided to combine the two, since it looks so fun in the Yarn Harlot's blog.

Shortly thereafter I finished my second sock! (Except I messed up the kitchener stitch at the end and it's more like a reverse kitchener, ie there's a seam on the outside. But a baby won't notice, right?)

I also finished the Clapotis I've been working on forever, though I have no pics of that.

Soon I will start making adult socks.

Crocheting in Israel

2007-12-25T14:28:00.001-05:00

I'm in Israel now! I'm less than 60 rows away from finishing my Clapotis, and each row gets shorter, so I might finish it tonight or tomorrow. Which means I'm going to have to copy down a sock pattern since I have no way of printing here.

Right before I left I finished my big spinning project- turquoise colonial wool, 2 ply, no clue on the yardage. It took forever. But the recipient was very happy with it and that's what counts and now I can go back to my commissioned knitting.

Today I was in Tel-Aviv and Yafo (Jaffa). There were a bunch of galleries we visited, and I saw this shop.

Of course I had to go in. Turns out this one woman crochets all these decorations by hand. I didn't take any pictures while inside the store itself, but here's a closer look at one of the wall-hangings so you can get an idea.

That's all crocheted. If I still crocheted, I would totally try making some of these.

Also, behind a curtain was a room which housed this woman's ginormous yarn stash. Unfortunately I did not get a picture of the giant yarn stash.

Hopefully there will be more knitting-related pictures from Israel in the near future.

Spinning and socks

2007-12-05T23:33:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine recently commissioned a scarf from me. She gave me the choice of yarn, after I had given her a bunch of options. One option was for me to spin my own fiber.

So she wanted a cream scarf with some purple. The purple I have leftover from a set of wrist warmers and hat I made her that this scarf is supposed to match. And I figured it might be cheaper to spin the yarn. So I drafted from the fold in order to get a very thin yarn. First I tried it out on some light blue merino I had, and then when I was satisfied with the results, I started on the alpaca.

It turned out I spun really thin, so I tried my hand at Navajo plying. (Also because I didn't want to spin another bobbin at that moment.) This was the result:

It looks like real yarn! This is the first time I'll be knitting with my own hand-plied yarn (unless you count non-plied one-ply yarn as "hand-plied"). I have to wait to knit until my friend tells me specifically what type of pattern she wants me to use.

I also decided to try making a sock. I've never made one before, and a friend gave me the pattern for a baby sock. Since it's such a quick project, it wouldn't be such a big deal if I needed to restart. Here's the sock.
I messed up in 2 places where I misread directions, but both were minor enough mistakes that I kept going. Now I have to make the second, but since I'm not even sure if I'm giving it to the person who i think I'm giving it to, I can wait until I've made myself my clapotis and my llama scarf (since it's freezing in Cambridge right now.)

My self-indulgent knitting spree is called "Operation Warm Up The Knitter of Shiny Things."

Cambridge is a knit-friendly city

2007-11-10T20:40:00.000-05:00

Cambridge is a knit-friendly city. Or at least my knitting has led to some friendly encounters. Lately they've been happening a lot more frequently. This past week:

I saw someone with Lion Brand Big Prints in her knitting bag. I asked her what she was making and it turns out she was bringing the yarn to her friend's house to teach her how to knit. She then asked me if I had made my headband that I was wearing, which I did.

It turned out that when I was taking the bus back to campus later that night, she was on the same bus. So there was some other knitterly conversation before she got off the bus.

I was working on a ribbon scarf, and someone complimented me on that. Then told me about how she had tried to learn knitting in the past, but never picked it up. So another woman on the bus told her that there were knitting classes in the adult education center in Cambridge (or whatever the place is called. I had never heard of it before.)

I got a bunch of compliments on my possum wool scarf.
And that's all I can remember at the moment.

I'm thinking about printing up some business cards with my name and contact info on them, for one-on-one knitting (or crocheting) tutorials. I can definitely teach beginning knitters, and perhaps some intermediate techniques. (I'm not good enough to be teaching classes on Fair Isle, Entrelac, lace, Intarsia, sock-making, etc. But I can teach cabling, increasing and decreasing, yarn-overs, and working with DPNs.) I could also perhaps teach introductory spinning, but that would be harder to get supplies for.

This would be a fun and easy way for me to earn money.

And maybe it would be an impetus for me to start learning the aforementioned advanced techniques. The more I know, the better a teacher I can be. Of course, I'm afraid to start any of these things, except maybe the intarsia or fair-isle, since those are similar to my kippot in color changingness.

Sales, stash-busting and kippot

2007-10-19T13:32:00.000-05:00

Both pairs of wrist warmers are finished. Alpaca is soft again, though it's still not llama. And now I'm making a few more items before my craft show on Sunday. Unfortunately it's going to be really hot out, so it won't be so easy to sell the hats and the scarves. Luckily I also have a lot of bags and ribbon scarves to sell. Like these ones.

It probably would have been a good idea to not buy any yarn for it and to just use up my stash instead. That's what my mom did for all of the things she made. But I bought yarn because it was on sale. There was some extremely cheap yarn at Ocean State Job Lot that I bought a while back.

For better or for worse I didn't make any ribbon scarves out of the more expensive sale ribbon yarn that I bought. Most of them were made from things I already had or the Job Lot yarn. So I guess I did do a bit of stash-busting after all. Or it could just be that I didn't get around to making that many more things since I started grad school. Yarn snobbery has a way of making someone not want to make cheap acrylic ipod cases.

If I were in a different venue, I would have probably made a few items out of more expensive yarn and charged as much as I should be. Like a pair of wrist-warmers out of a ball of $8 alpaca that took 2 days to make would be sold for $20. A llama hat out of 1.5 balls at 7.95 each that took 3+ days to make would cost $30. A normal-sized scarf out of 4 skeins of possum wool at $8 a skein would cost $75. An alpaca scarf like that would take over 5 skeins to make and would be $85. And that's me very much undercharging for the labor. But it's a lot easier to charge more when you make things out of nicer yarns, and it takes the same amount of labor. Assuming I could actually sell my work at these prices, it would be better in the long run. Or I'd have a bunch of really nice well-made gifts.

So that's the other part of the strategy. Only make things that if not sold would be good for gifts. That way you're not losing the money since you'd have to spend it to make the gift anyways, and now it's already made for you.

I don't think I could ever earn a living as a professional knitter. But it's nice to get money from commissions every so often, assuming these commissions are not kippot.

Like this one. It seems innocent enough. But I've actually made this kippah 5 times! 4 were a set for a wedding and this one was the commission. At least the colors were different. But I've officially retired this design. If anyone wants a kippah that looks like this, they'll have to commission someone else.

In general I've stopped doing kippot since the injury this summer. I'm afraid of them. I also am having too much fun with my knitting and spinning. And the yarn snobbery doesn't help.

And I think I realize why I like knitting more than crocheting- I've never crocheted with yarn that was not cotton or acrylic! When using nice yarns, I always knit. Because crocheting is usually reserved for kippot (cotton), trivets (dishcloth cotton) and blankets (cheap acrylic since blankets are ginormous.)

So as an experiment, I may try crocheting a hat or a scarf out of nice yarn and see what happens.

More on the wrist warmers, side-effects of llama

2007-10-15T13:32:00.001-05:00

The first one is finished!

Close up on the detail.

I'm really enjoying making these. So I decided to work on a pair for myself. I have a bunch of balls of alpaca from a frogged Beret of Doom sitting around, so I decided to use those.

The project is going well, and I finished one in a day. The problem is that when I started working with the alpaca, it didn't feel soft. Alpaca always feels soft!

I've been spoiled by baby llama. God help me. This fiber snobbery is going to put me in debt at some point...

Luckily I think the cure is to make something quick out of acrylic. Then alpaca will be soft again.

Wrist warmers!

2007-10-10T12:31:00.000-05:00

This is what I'll be using the maroon llama for. They'll be the first wrist warmers I've made. It seems like a non-scary pattern. :)

Comfort yarn

2007-10-10T11:32:00.000-05:00

Lately I've been knitting with a lot of acrylic. I'm trying to make things either for charity or to sell at my craft show next week. With the craft show I don't want to invest my yarn and energy into an expensive project that won't sell- it's just too risky. I don't mind using real wool, but I'm not going to risk a skein of alpaca on a hat that ends up unwanted.

So since I'm being good about finishing projects and stuff, I haven't been working on the things for me. And thus no nice yarns (except for when I'm spinning, but even then the spinning has mostly been for others.)

Yesterday I was in an awful mood, due to lack of eating, lack of sunlight, and whatever else. So I decided that I was going to take a break from the acrylic and knit with my "comfort yarn."

The yarn pictured above is from my visit to the LYS in Harvard Square on Monday. It's 100% baby llama, and it was really affordable, and the proceeds go help build schools for children in Peru. You can't really go wrong with it. (The background yarn was a special type of koigu that was on sale.)

The problem is that I need to find a pattern for it. I have to decide whether the maroon skeins will become a hat or wristwarmers. The others are for a scarf, but I'm not sure what I want to do with that either. I'm sick of 1x1 ribbing or the Good Ole Cabled Scarf that I've made twice already. But I want something that will be thick and fluffy. Maybe I can knit it lengthwise or something.

Until I decide on the llamas, I'll be working on my Clapotis, which is made out of silk-wool.

Classes, day 1, and a choka!

2007-09-17T19:42:00.000-05:00

Classes started today. I decided to bring my silver alpaca roving and my new Ashford drop spindle (since my old one sadly died. I bought a new one. It arrived this past Wednesday. Huzzah!). I'm such a bad person, spinning for the attention. But I really like the attention. It gets people to come over and talk to me, and then I can make new friends!

So I started spinning before my German class. Lo, and behold, people noticed. And of course I let the people around me pet my alpaca. They all thought it was really cool. And the girl sitting next to me (I forgot her name, since I'm bad with names. Bad me!) lives in a convent in upstate NY during summers/breaks where they raise Kashmir goats and spin the wool! She herself tried learning on a wheel and had trouble with it. So I showed her how it works on the drop spindle. Maybe she'll buy herself a spindle and I can give her lessons. (And maybe she'll give me some Kashmir roving. That's wishful thinking on my part, though.)

But I've been working a lot on my wheel as well, which is in my room, and the only audience I have for that usually is the cat. So that's proof that I don't only spin for the attention.

In other news, I noticed a blog called Sock Pr0n, where she has regular contests where people have to submit a couplet to Choka on It, a site where they are attempting to write the world's longest Choka. They've probably already succeeded. It's a fun site. And Sock Pr0n's contest goes until September 28th. (For the 1 or 2 hypothetical readers of this blog...)

Hopefully I'll post pictures of things soon. I made a small pouch today for Homespun Helper's sunshine sweets project. My hopes are to make a bunch of items for charity before Yom Kippur, with the thought that one is supposed to be doing teshuva (repentance), tefila (prayer), and tzedakah (charity) during this time period, so I can work on the latter, which is more fun and helps more people anyways.

Knitting in the Divinity School

2007-09-11T23:22:00.000-05:00

Today marked the beginning of my orientation for my Master's of Theological Studies program at Harvard Divinity School. I decided to work on a calorimetry headband in green wool. I made the entire thing today!

A lot of people commented on my knitting. I happened to mention spinning in a conversation, and someone said that I should bring my wheel to campus. Unfortunately that isn't so practical. But I might bring the drop spindle, just to ~~show off~~ enlighten people about the wonders of hand-spinning.

And the Div school has a knitting circle of some sort, though I'm having trouble finding information on it. I bet they do a lot of charity knitting, though, since the Div school is full of awesome people who want to save the world.

More adventures in plying

2007-09-05T23:02:00.000-05:00

I'm still having some trouble getting the wheel to run smoothly when I ply. It kept on stopping for some reason. But I managed to ply this. It's all merino wool. And it was decadent to work with. (Unfortunately I don't get to keep it. That seems to be the norm with everything I create.)

At least I'm getting a lot better at keeping the yarn consistent. Pre-drafting helps a lot.

In other news, I am now in Cambridge. As is my yarn. I have a lot of yarn.

I also learned today that cats are entranced by spinning. My housemate has a psycho cat. Said psycho cat has been hissing at me a lot since I moved in on Sunday. But she was very nice to me when I was spinning, and kept poking her head into my room. And now she's hissing at me less. She's in my room right now, sniffing the wheel and the yarn.

If I get a chance, I might knit her a catnip mouse.

Adventures in plying

2007-08-25T22:16:00.001-05:00

A few weeks ago, I bought a giant ball of corriedale roving. It weighed about 1lb (they didn't have a scale, so the storeowner guesstimated).

So last week I decided to spin this corriedale. Or at least a small portion of it. 2 bobbins later it was still a giant ball of roving.

Then I decided to ply the roving.

I have a lazy kate, which is a thingy that holds bobbins. You put the bobbins on it, take the 2 strands of yarn, and you have the wheel going in the opposite direction from what you spun the yarn in. Animal fibers are supposed to be spun clockwise, so thus I plied counter-clockwise.

And behold! It worked!

Isn't it pretty?

I ended up giving it to the friend who I stayed with last Shabbat, since she is a knitter. She said that if it weren't for the fact that I had brought it and she knew I was making her something, she would have never guessed that I had spun it myself!

Now I'm excited to do more spinning, but unfortunately I have a lot of other projects I need to finish first.

Stash!!!

2007-08-13T18:36:00.000-05:00

I had to organize my stash yesterday. Actually, the word "my" is a misnomer, as much of the yarn is my mom's. The majority is mine, though.

We sorted it by yarn type, and from there boxed it based on whether it was staying at home or coming with me to Cambridge.

Here are the results. I'd put up the pics individually here, but they would take forever to upload. The album has captions, though.

gigantic stash of doom

On Knitting Charities

2007-08-04T21:55:00.000-05:00

At Warm up Winchester there is a contest going on, where if we write about our favorite knitting charity in our knitting blog, we'll be entered into a drawing for 2 skeins of Noro Kureyon. Who am I to pass up the chance at free yarn?

Of course, no one really reads this knitting blog besides me thus far, but perhaps someday people will start reading it, and will come across this post, and will learn something about knitting charities.

Personally I don't have a favorite. I haven't been knitting for charity for that long, though I also haven't been knitting for that long. I learned how to knit during winter break of my freshman year of college, and I just graduated, so I've been knitting for a little over 3.5 years.

So I'll do a profile of the knitting charities I've donated to:

The very first knitted item I donated was a scarf for the annual OCP auction. It actually took me quite a while to finish it, but eventually I did. A friend of mine, J.S., was the person to win it. Actually, the bidding went between a few of my guy friends, and I was pretty touched that they all bid on it for me. This was when I first started knitting. It might not have been the first finished item, but it was the first donated (since I donated "a scarf" which whoever won would tell me what they wanted exactly.) My sophomore, junior, and senior years I donated kippot, again made to the specifications of whoever won them. Each year the OCP picks a different charity who they donate the proceeds of the auction to. Usually it's a Jewish charity who gives the money to poor people who need food.

Then there was the annual raffle for the Providence Hebrew Day School. I donated scarves to them my sophomore and junior years. This past year, unfortunately, I was very busy and was unable to knit them anything. But hopefully I'll be able to make them something for this coming year. The money for this event all goes to the Day School. I like being able to support the Orthodox community in Providence, since even though I never went to the day school, the community has been so wonderful in hosting me and making me feel welcome. I love my Shabbatot that I spend in RI. So they're very deserving of my knitted goods.

This then takes me to senior year. Around February or March I came upon this amazing group on livejournal called 3000 in 2007 a.k.a Crafting for a Cause. Their goal is to craft 3000 handmade items in the year 2007, since at that time 3000 American soldiers had died in Iraq. People could donate the items to whatever charity they wanted. I joined, and thus started my real journey into charity knitting.

In march I knitted a beret, which I donated to the Dulaan project.

Then I made 2 scarves for the Mary Read Memorial Knit-along. Mary Read was a student at Virginia Tech who died in the massacre. She was also a knitter. So in her memory we knitted fuzzy scarves to donate to elderly people. The knit-along isn't really going on anymore as far as I know, though obviously people can make fuzzy scarves in her memory and donate them to people.

I've made a square for Warm Up America, though I want to make a few before sending them in. Or at least another one. They assemble the squares into blankets and donate them to homeless people. Though in this case I'm sending the squares to someone who will turn them into blankets and send them in as such.

And then I went off to Israel and injured myself. Alas! But luckily I got better, and resumed my knitting, albeit with a newfound fear of crocheting kippot, since those can hurt.

Since my return to America and knitting/crocheting I have made 4 items for Warm up Winchester, and also a scarf for the East Bay Coalition for the homeless. My mom's women's club (the General Federation of Women's Clubs of RI/specifically Barrington in this case) is doing a scarf drive for them. So I made a scarf for her.

I also had a bunch of squares lying around that I crocheted into a small afghan which is going to a local animal shelter.

So it's hard to pick favorites. Crafting for a Cause/3000 in 2007 is my favorite community, but they themselves are not a charity so much as an organizing force that gets people to donate to different charities. Donating auction items is fun, because it feels good to have people pay money for your knitted goods, even if you don't get to keep that money. It gives you validation as an artist. The drive my mom is doing gets points for being easy to donate to, in that I can just give the items to my mom and not have to worry about mailing them. Of course, they only want washable items, so no fuzzy scarves for them. The Mary Read Knit-along was nice in that it felt like I could do something constructive after the tragedy of the massacre. Being a college student then, I think we all felt a connection to Virginia Tech when it happened. Warm up America squares are easy to make, and are good for getting rid of scrap yarn. And Warm up Winchester is small and new, and I feel like they can definitely use my items, and I'm definitely making a difference in their quest to have 100 items by the end of October.

But ultimately, I don't think it really matters where you donate to, as long as you're doing something good, and giving things to those who need them and can't otherwise get them.

In general, I like knitting for charity a lot more than just donating money. Perhaps it would be more economical to buy winter clothes for the charities rather than making them myself. But I really feel like I'm doing something when I can create it myself.

Roving!

2007-07-25T22:00:00.000-05:00

I ordered about 50$ worth of roving last week, and it finally arrived today!!!! It's all shiny. And I also managed to locate my huge bag of alpaca that my friend GM gave me as a thesis present. I started spinning with it on the wheel, and it's coming out quite nicely...

Of course, now I need to learn how to ply. And dye.

Another FO

2007-07-24T18:46:00.001-05:00

Here it is, as promised- my crocheted scarf. I messed up at the beginning and as a result the whole thing is 1 stitch narrower than it should be. But other than that it's fine.

I alternated between single, double, and triple crochet, so I could get the hang of doing them all linearly, and also because I'm lazy and impatient and wanted to be done with this scratchy scarf so I can crochet something less painful to work with!

Here's a closer look:

Isn't it shiny?

World's biggest yarn stash

2007-07-21T22:06:00.001-05:00

It's a stash!

Look at the yarn! There's so much of it! Isn't it shiny?

The Knitter of Shiny Things spins shiny things

2007-07-19T13:43:00.000-05:00

I got a wheel yesterday. A Lendrum Double Treadle Complete. It's shiny.

I was having trouble with it yesterday, but I seem to have gotten the hang of it now.

So here it is. A ball of handspun yarn. Huzzah!

Fake knitting

2007-07-14T21:25:00.001-05:00

Here's a hat I just made on the knifty knitter, a circular loom with pegs that you wrap string around, pull strings through loops of strings, etc. until you create some finished object. It's a lot easier and quicker than regular knitting. So far I've only used it for hats.

I'm teaching knitting and crocheting at a summer camp, and some of the kids are just not getting it. Now obviously with young kids I'm not going to have a bunch of expert knitters by the end of the summer, but it frustrates me that no matter how many times I show them, some of them can't figure it out. I feel like I'm failing them.

So I've decided to bring in my set of knifty knitter looms, and my mom's set as well, and lend them to the kids who aren't getting the regular knitting. That way, they can still make things, and feel good about it. And it's kind of like knitting. And I think that maybe if they can get the mechanics of it, some day knitting will come easier to them, because they'll understand the concept of pulling strings through loops to create new loops. I hope it works!

And I'm working on my Clapotis now. I'm really excited about it. I'm finally on the straight rows, and soon (in about a row or so) I will get to drop stitches!

Scarf!

2007-07-08T18:28:00.000-05:00

I've been knitting and crocheting for 3 1/2 years now, and only today did I learn how to crochet scarves.

Don't laugh! I can hear you laughing out there...

I have good reason. Why crochet scarves when you can knit them? With knitting you can do all sorts of things, like ribbing, and cabling, and seed stitch...I've been happily knitting scarves all along. I crochet kippot and granny squares. That's it.

But since I'm going to be teaching knitting and crocheting at a summer camp starting on Tuesday, I figured it might be a good idea to learn how to actually crochet linearly. So I asked my mom, and she showed me how.

It's actually quite easy. You just chain the width of the scarf, and then crochet into every chain, and chain up one if you're single crocheting the rows and 3 if you're double crocheting. It's probably the same for anything else, like purses or belts. So now I can crochet things!

I still like knitting better for linear things, though.

If I'm not lazy, I'll post pictures when I'm done, though it doesn't really look so pretty at the moment. But it's my first crocheted scarf, so it's only to be expected, right?

Recovered

2007-07-04T16:39:00.001-05:00

I'm back to knitting and crocheting again! Huzzah!

Unfortunately, I have to take lots of breaks while I'm doing it.

But now that I'm back in the states, I can go back to my old projects, and perhaps do some more spinning. This is probably my way of forgetting about the kippot that I'm supposed to make. I'm sooooooo sick of kippot. But I've promised them to people.

Pictures will come soon, as I finish the things I've started.

Injured!

2007-06-17T11:48:00.001-05:00

I gave myself a case of tendonitis doing archaeology. It all started when my hand started hurting when I was using the trowel and the patiche. And sometimes I'd get a sharp pain if I picked up a bucket incorrectly. I thought it would go away. But it didn't.

At first I tried to crochet a little when I got off the Tel, but then I gave up. And when I was told I couldn't do archaeology for the rest of the season (at least digging) I gave up the crocheting. And now I've been diagnosed. I'm thinking I might not knit or crochet again until I leave the land of Milk, Honey, Acrylics, and Archaeological Injuries.

Which sucks. A lot. And my fingers just started to hurt now. You know how you can tell? I just swore. That's a bad archaeological habit I picked up. Luckily I didn't pick up smoking. Or heavy drinking. Yet.

From the country that brings you ancient spindles and huge flocks of sheep...

2007-05-22T07:56:00.000-05:00

I was going to post an entry with lots of pictures, but the blogger picture thing is being annoyingly slow, so I bring you this rant instead.

Once upon a time, I was an anthro major at Penn. (And by "once upon a time, I mean "until I graduated a week and a half ago.") Penn has a great museum of anthropology and archaeology. I basically lived there.

In the museum is an exhibit from Canaan, that has a lot of Bronze Age and Iron Age artifacts. There's even a model of a 3-pillared building, complete with goats, and a mannequin of a woman spinning wool on a drop spindle.

According to my advisor, who helped organize the exhibit, that mannequin costed the museum over a million dollars.

So here I am, in the land of wool-spinning artifacts, and I hit up a yarn store. And what do I find?

There's some cotton. There's some acrylic (like a whole store full...)

BUT ABSOLUTELY NO WOOL!!!!

No sheep for me. No alpaca. No possum. No yak. No bambo or soy-silk for that matter. It's all cotton and acrylic.

What the hell is wrong with this country?

And where did all the wool go?

They should just call me the Yarn Innkeeper*

2007-05-21T12:08:00.001-05:00

(From 6/21, since now I have a good internet connection and it's letting me put up my pictures. Huzzah!)

I'm trying to be good. I really, really am.

As you may or may not know, I'm currently in Israel, awaiting the start of my excavations.

I had to pack minimally, so that I'm only lugging one suicase and not two. It worked. It also meant I had to choose small crochet projects (ie kippot) which would take a long time and would keep me occupied for the next 6 weeks.

As a reward for all the kippot I was going to make, I also brought some random yarns, just a minimal amount, to make some squares and stuff.

But then I went shopping, since there was a yarn store nearby. And got this:

Yes, it's acrylic. I know, I know. But there's really nothing else. Well, there's more kippah yarn. I might get that at the end of my trip, but for now I have enough kippah supplies.

I'm justifying it by the fact that I need to work on samples of my projects that I'm going to be teaching kids how to make this summer. And I can make other charity items. And it was there. And, well, it's yarn!

*If you don't get the reference, look up an artscroll chumash (first 5 books of the Torah) and see how they translate "Zonah."

Yarn woes

2007-05-09T01:56:00.000-05:00

Is it just me, or does it suck when yarn gets tangled and you spend hours untangling it, only to realize you still have to cut it? Or when you're winding a skein of recycled silk, and it actually breaks apart a bit?

Both happened today. But my yarn will survive.

I wish I had shiny things to post. Hmm...

That's the tangled yarn, pre-tangleage.

That's my first kippah for a non-Jew. Random, but a fun project. And it took like no time at all.

I've also finished a blue scarf (same as the purple one, only blue and slightly larger) and a dishcloth/trivet/placemat that I don't know what to do with.

Aforementioned scarf

2007-05-02T11:24:00.000-05:00

And now I'm making a second one.

Also on my needles:
Clapotis
The makings of a new kippah (which will take forever)
2 socks on 2 needles (well I'm still casting on there...)

Knitting Embarrassment

2007-04-22T13:18:00.000-05:00

In the past year or so, I've turned into a yarn snob. I'm not proud of this, but I'm not particularly ashamed either. It's what I am.

Now mind you, I still work with acryllics on occasion, such as making a Jayne Hat, or an afghan (since that requires a lot of yarn and I can't afford to make a giant wool blanket). But I've shied away from such things as fun fur.

But now, with the Virginia Tech Massacre, there has been a coming together of knitters to knit things for charity in honor of one of the students who died, who happened to be a knitter, Mary Read. They are knitting scarves to donate to elderly people in her memory. The knit-a-long's site is here.

So I happened to have some microspun and some fun fur in my stash, and I decided this would be a good use of it.

Though knitting it in public has caused me to become a bit embarrassed. I shouldn't be. I'm knitting it for a good cause. But there's something about a bright purple fun-fur scarf that exudes rediculousness.

And the thing is, I doubt any normal person would notice or thing anything of it. And even many fellow knitters wouldn't care. They'd just think, "ooh! a knitter!" But yet I still get the feeling of being stared at when I pull this scarf out.

Despite that, I still plan to knit this thing in class (and by "class" I mean "while working on my thesis" since my classes are over). Or outside on locust walk, or on the green in front of the library, in plain view of everyone. Hopefully I'll get over it.

A New Blog

2007-04-22T12:58:00.000-05:00

So I've decided to follow in the footsteps of many dedicated [read:obsessive] knitters and start my own knitting blog. I'll update it when I have shiny things to put on it, or when I want to bitch about patterns going awry, or whatever. Unlike my other blogs, this one is solely about knitting, and probably will not be issues-related. I already have another blog for that. So my guess is that this blog will only be of interest to fellow crafters. Or people who like looking at shiny things.