Branching out ~ is done!

Yay!

My branching out scarf is done. :-) I finished it ahead of schedule too. But I tell ya, I got into a groove last night.

Still haven't decided if I'm gonna keep it or give as a gift. I think I may decide that closer to Christmas time.




I did forget to take of a picture of it in the "cat yak" stage, but I got on of it pinned and blocked and a close up.

Happy 100th!

Happy 100th post. O mine gorsh, has it really been 100 posts?

Considering I started this blog lil more than a year ago with absolutely no direction and idea as to what I was gonna put on here, I'm amazed that I hit 100 so soon.

It must be that I am beginning to get so comfortable with blogging. Or maybe it's because I found the knitting community and love the idea of sharing my projects and ideas. I have no idea who reads or if anyone reads it outside of my mom's group. LOL not even sure if anyone from there reads it on a regular basis.

Wow, 100, pretty neat. That means I'm blogging more than once a week. I thought that it would be especially hard to do even *that* much.

My little stamp on the internets.

I evidently have a problem ...

with spelling demonstration. What's up with that?

It's my birthday, make a mess ...

I woke up to dark, gloomy skys, a perfect morning for my birthday. It rains almost every year on my birthday. I figure it's cause I'm a cancer :-). Either that or I figure the world was weeping with joy.

I'll take either one.

Today also marks the anniversary of the Battle of the little bighorn. Or otherwise known as Custer's last stand. This is a big deal for me because I am part Indian (or Native American, if you want to be pc).

Last night I went to a spinning demonstartion and I love it. I had better luck with a single treadle wheel, then the double treadle wheel. But I feel that was because the person who used the double T before me twisted the fiber up so bad that I just never had a chance.

I also showed someone my drop spindling technique and I'm doing okay in that department :-) I now feel super prepared for Tour de Fleece :-)

I won a spinning wheel!

DH won a spinning wheel for me on ebay. I is super excited, lol. It's a vintage spinning wheel. I hope it works okay and stuff. I did this turbo-charged happy dance when I won. Under $100 with shipping. And the seller has 100% feedback. So I'm fairly confident that he/she isn't going to do anything to jeopardize their feeback.


Oh I can't wait til it comes and try it out. And if I love it, DH can make me more bobbins :-)

Well, happy Monday ... If I have to, lol.

Well, I ended up frogging DS's hat last night. Somehow I managed to pick up lots of extra stitches. Weird. I counted several times to make sure.

I'm still making slow progress on my scarf.

I'm also gonna have another project coming into the cue. All Iknow is that it will be a pair of socks. :-)

Was going to spin last night when I realized I don't have as much fiber as I thought. ... I want to keep what I have for tomorrow's demonstartions. Wouldn't wanna be like drew on Ice Road truckers and come unprepared :-) But I did buy some off of ebay last night. Don't remember from who though ... If it's good I will pimp them, of course. :-)

And because I'm a joiner I've joined plurk :-) TONS of fun.

And I also joined the Plurkette Hen circle.

Between all that and wanting a spinning wheel now, MIL said all I need now is a butter churn. :-) DH told the neighbor to keep an eye out cause I may decide I want to process my own fleece and one day a sheep may suddenly appear in my yard. I keep thinking, if it gets that bad, the sheep will get parked out at SIL's house. :-D Keeping her horses company.

I guess I must be feeling all is well in my world if I'm joining all this stuff and lusting after certain items. DS is potty training and is doing excellent. I'm managing to keep a decently cleaned house. I'm not letting house hold stuff pile up. Things are going okay at work. I guess everything is just coming together.

Spinning ...

Things have been going good knitting wise so I thought I would start up my spinning again.

Well, also this Tuesday a woman is coming to my LYS with a couple spinning wheels and is gonna do a demonstration. I'm really excited for it and cannot wait. Not only is this a chance for someone to guide me through my drop spindling and let me know if I'm doing it correctly, but I can try out a spinning wheel.

DH knows I kind of have an itch for a spinning wheel now so he's gonna start keeping an eye out. Meanwhile I should start studying up on what would be a good wheel for me.

I want a wheel that will spin a various range of thicknesses. I suppose sock to DK.

But I need to learn what all the different parts of a wheel are. I do know I want a treadle wheel. But don't know if a double treadle is better than a single treadle.

Oh there is so much to learn. But if I can get the hang of my drop spindle I know that will be able to tide me over for a while until I find a wheel.

So if anyone has any suggestions for a newbie wannabe wheel spinner please drop me a note :-)

With this all in mind I decided to joined the ravelry group "10 Minutes a day". I really want to spin more. I figured this is a great way to get a routine down.

I managed to spin for more than 10 minutes this evening while DS was awake and he didn't bother the fiber or the drop spindle. That made me super happy and I'm hoping I will be able to do it more while he's away rather than waiting til he's asleep.

Learn from your mistakes ...

Last night I tried overdyeing some dishcloth yarn using the hot pour method and a crock pot. I used the wilton food colors. I let it "cook" for a while, then shut it off and let it cool over night.

I woke up to find that the water had blue in it when last night it was almost clear. I tried rinsing the excess dye and to my horror, my loverly blues and lavendars turned to a rosie rougish color. :-(

I have found out since then that I should have used the wrong type of dye for the type of fiber I was using.

Live and learn ... but now I know and I have an excuse to buy some wool yarn and play around a bit since I have a pretty good idea of what I want now. Either that or buy some rit, but then I don't dare use my crockpot, lol.

Some updates

Here's an updated photo of my progress on the branching out scarf. It's around 21 inches long. I've been taking it one repeat at a time. I'm hoping to be done with it by the end of the month. Still haven't decided if I want to keep this or give as a gift.


When it came to this project lifelines were my best friend. :-)


I also started making DS a hat. It's just a simple rolled brim hat. I cast on 100 stitches on size U.S. 7 dpn. I do love how bright it is. It's Caron's simply soft acryllic, I think. :-)



I'm so glad to be able to finally show these off. One of my friends had a birthday recently and I suprised her with a little goodie bag. The blue bag I made, actually :-) And these stitch markers. I was so glad to hear that she loved them. Gives me a bit more confidence that I can put beads together and make pretty things :-).




Here's a close up, but the flash was still a bit bright.


This is fabric that I picked up this past weekend. It's to make a scrub top for my SIL. She is going to be graduating from Vet Tech school this fall. As far as I know she is kicking butt grade wise. I'm very proud of her cause she managed a very full schedule of school and working. Not an easy feat. :-). The picture doesn't do the color much justice. It's a very pretty lavendar background.

Tour de Fleece

I'm joining it! :-) Oh I'm excited. Don't have much fiber but I figure I probably have enough. Heck, if I can get through my small amount I will be happy.

Got my blog button, got the starting date written on my calendar (July 5), got my fiber, got my drop spindle, got my youtube video, lol. I think I'm set. :-)

Information on it can be found here.


Oooo, doing the happy dance :-)

Happy WWKIP day!

I did some knitting, but I don't know if it really qualifies. We went driving to look at a vehicle that is a few towns over. I was actually the passenger instead of the pilot. So I decided to start a plain hat for DS. So people driving past us seen me knitting. :-)

Things I've learned thanks to a washcloth, lol

When I first started Branching Out scarf I had lots of problems with it. But ever since completing the Lacy Diamond washcloth the scarf has been almost smooth sailing. It's amazing that working on that lacy diamond pattern has helped me so much with the scarf. Now my only worry is that I will have enough yarn.

Tee Hee~!

I'm up to it again, lol. But I don't dare say anything *just yet*

Oh I feel so good :-D

Another gift given ~ Lacy Diamond Washcloth

I gave my lacy diamond washcloth to the person who was leaving my work building. He came back to get some stuff.

I gotta say that the reaction when the gift was open totally made my day. :-) I was told "I can't use this to wash pots and pans" :-) So it's gonna be used in a way that it will be around for many years to come. Probably to hold something very important in his life.

So even though he won't ever see this, lol, Good bye Fr. GBB, you were a bright star in the diocese and you will be sorely missed.

Super secret project can now be shown ~ It's a blanket

June 8, 2008, was my cousin's baby shower. I gave her the super secret project. It's a blanket :-) She loved the blanket. Just one part is missing on it (the label). My coworker is embroidering that for me. When it's completed I will take a picture of it. I told cousin that next time she comes up she will need to bring the blanket and I will sew it on for her since she's not crafty-able, lol.

So, here goes :-)


Pattern is something I came up with on my own. It's not a basketweave pattern.

I am very happy to have it done and given. All said and done it was about 40 hours (can't remember if I mentioned this before.) But it was a "labor" of love. (Ha I crack myself up)

My first lil bag

Totally cute I think. Not sure what I'm gonna do with it. I know I should get a different colored ribbing on there. I used the tutorial from Yarnmonster's blog.

After going through that my mind is kind of brimming with possibilities for ways to make my own style of this. It was so nice to have something that was written out so nicely and clearly.

Take a break?

Started the branching out scarf again last night, but forgot where I was -- well, not really. I forgot how to do a SSK. I had frogged the scarf since I couldn't figure out where I had left off. The yarn knotted up and I ended up having to cut it off and start over. Then I had a brain freeze and decided to put the scarf down.

This morning I remembered how to do a SSK. But I haven't had much luck with knitting it today. I've gotten so used to knitting with the heavier dishcloth yarn that the sock yarn is kind of throwing me. ...

As of now I have no plans to knit anything else. I've pretty much decided that any "gift" knitting is gonna have to be for Christmas. ... Even then I'm not so sure. I have a lot of people to knit for then. ... *sigh*

Since I seem to be having a block on the scarf I'm thinking maybe I should take a break for a week or so from the knitting. I could concentrate on making stitch markers but I kind of have to be in the right frame of mind to do that. I look at the beads I have and I'm kind of at a loss as how to combine them to make them pretty. I did pick up a few more things tonite but realized that I may need jump rings. So far I've gotten most of my stuff from walmart, but the more I go and look the more I realize that they don't have a whole lot of selection.

Ahhh, my mood is probably due to the weather. The weather has been rainy, dreary and yucky. Although this afternoon the temps warmed up, but it was windy as heck.

Anywho, I think I'm gonna take it easy this weekend.

Lacy Diamond Washcloth ~ Done!

I would do this pattern again. However, I would not try to work on it when my son is around or if someone tried to talk to me, lol. Totally breaks my concentration and I forget to do a YO.

I have it all wrapped up and ready to go. Hopefully the recipient will be stopping by the office early next week.

My knitting bag

I sewed a knitting bag. It's good for smaller projects. I would love to make a bigger one, but need to find a good, easy pattern (I'm slightly sewing impaired). So if anyone knows of a good, easy pattern please let me know. I don't need anything with pockets or fancy stuff. This was made with a pattern I bought at walmart.

And what have I been carrying inside? :-)



This is a Lacy Diamonds washcloth. The one that I intended to get together and give as a farewell gift. I have one repeat left. It's taken me longer than expected cause I manage to either forget a YO or P2SS. Anywho, I am glad to be almost done. It's almost as challenging as the Branching Out Scarf from knitty.com. I haven't touched that in a while. I hope I remember which row I'm on. I also can't wait to use circular needles again. I really prefer those now. I can't knit in bed, for one, with the straight needles. :-)