Blogging again!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!!!!

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

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!

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

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...

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

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?

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

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

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: