Recent FOs

I've been getting some knitting done, even if "the sweater" I've dragged around with me for 3 months is not getting done. More on that later.

Felicity by Wanett Clyde
Rowan Kid Classic
4 days to finish, I really liked it. I made it for the BSD Project



One Skein Scarf by Denise Cozzitorto
Blue - Columbia Minerva Roma
Pink - Rowan Kid Classic
3 days to complete. Mods: Instead of the shell pattern, I ended up just doing a DC in each stitch around and 2 DC in each corner stitch. 1 extra row of DC in the pink.
Again, made for the BSD Project


Mens Fingerless Mitts by Kathy North
Stonehedge Fiber Mill's Shepherds Wool
8 Days to complete, given to Fran Healy



Mens Fingerless Mitts by Kathy North
Stonehedge Fiber Mill's Shepherds Wool
8 Days to complete, given to Owen for his birthday



My Crimson Green Jeans is slow going right now. Some time in September I had finished the back and one sleeve. I was about to start the second sleeve when I realized that the back was sucking in too far and that it needed to be redone. So, I frogged the whole cable rib section on the back, and started over with a 2 needle sizes larger. I"m liking the fabric a lot better, however it frequently goes into time out, because I'm so annoyed with having to reknit. Last week I started a new ball of yarn and as it happens it was from a skein that had more red dye in it and it was so obvious I ripped back 6 rows to start with a different ball of yarn. Thank goodness I'm almost done with the cable rib (just a few more inches). Then I need to do the 2nd sleeve and the button band.

Ode To Fall

This is the first project that I have been involved where I started with dyed fiber materials and ended with a finished knitted object. It came about from the Fancy Kitty drum carder group on Ravelry, this was a BSKAL (Batt-Spin-Knit Along) and along the way there would be prizes! My batts won the first round prize where I got a WPI tool from Ron, the maker of FKDCs and a 2oz batt from Blushing Ewe.

It all started when I bought the polworth roving at knit night. Sharon of Stitch Jones brought in her "fiber bin of doom" and I could not resist petting the lovely wool. I had to choose between a lovely light blue roving and an orange/purple roving. I went with the Japanese Maple roving, because they are colors that I don't normally use and I wanted to challenge myself. On my FKDC I whipped up 4 lovely textured batts. Then I spun up the batts into a single and navajo plied it to make a worsted weight yarn. The scarf only took 8 days to knit, because it's done on size 11 needles.

From start to finish this project took 25 days!

Scarf Pattern Off to the Races by Patricia Bishop

Materials used in making the batts:

4oz Stitch Jones polworth roving (Japanese Maple)
1 oz Wool/Silk/Mohair
Sari Silk
Wensleydale Cross Locks
Adult Mohair Locks
Angelina (aurora borealis)
Stacey Charles Ristrato yarn bits
BFL Locks

Crimson Greenjeans

Here is my assistant helping me with the start of my second sweater. She's checking to make sure I got gauge (I don't care if I did, because gauge is an evil, lying, witch with a B).

I'm making Mr. Greenjeans by Amy Swenson using Stitch Jones' Dyepot Worsted in Crimson. I'm already past dividing off the armholes, so it's going fast!!

Tour De Fleece

This was my first year participating in the Tour de Fleece - a spinning "competition" that happens during the Tour de France. I joined Team Rookie, Team Batty and Team Lendrum. All of my yarns were spun on my new Lendrum, but some had to be plied on my Ashford due to the nature of the yarn. I feel really good about the yarns I made and I hit my goal of spinning for a minimum of 15 mins each day (but really I was able to spin at least an hour or more) I had forgotten to take the rest days, but there were a couple of days I could not spin, so I figured it got evened out that way. Only 8 of the 9 yarns are pictured, apparently I forgot to take a photo of one before I entered it in the local fair. Most of my yarns were spun from Batts, except the top right blue yarns, they were spun from a roving. Total distance of yarn made was 2511 yards (I'm counting each ply made) which equals 1.42 miles! Wow, that seems like a lot when you add it all up!! I would definitely participate again.

Yay for Yarn

Hazel is loving the new yarn I'm working with.  She especially loved that it matched her outfit.

Tulip Festival and Natural Dyeing

All of these photos were taken today at the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival. Yeah, it was overcast and yeah, it rained, but ya know what? It wasn't crowded! Which is how it usually is if the weather is nice. And our family doesn't do crowds terribly well, so having it basically to ourselves was nice.

Hazel had lots of fun having her picture taken. She especially loved being in the large wooden shoe. She could reach down and pick up the sawdust shavings on the ground and try to put them in her mouth (ugh). It was a little cold for her, so we warmed up in their gift shop. So many cutesy things, but none went home with me. I did buy a couple bunches of cut tulips and a pot of "rip van winkle" narcissus. On the round about way home, we stopped at my mom's so that Hazel could crawl around and I left her a bunch of the tulips I bought. She is flying home tonight from Hawaii and I think she will be delighted that we thought of her. Of course she may be a little annoyed that we stopped by when she wasn't home, but oh well...

Oh, I should talk about yesterday too! I had originally planned to go out to Woodland Woolworks to try out the double treadle Lendrum that I am lusting after, but got a notice on Facebook that Pico Accuardi Dyeworks was having an event this weekend in their workshop. I thought that the natural dyeing lesson sounded cool, so I nixed the WW plan and invited Tami to go with me to PAD instead. We dyed up some mini skeins of sock yarn and a mini skein of Columbia wool from Imperial Stock Ranch. Who would have thought that yellow onion skins would dye wool green, or that a baking soda spritz would turn a burgundy to purple??? I also am intrigued by indigo, when you dip your fiber in, it turns green, but once the chemcial in the indigo hits the oxygen in the air, it turns blue. I had no idea that natural dyeing could be so much fun!

Here's some pictures of what I dyed up:


This one had an unfortunate "spaghetti incident" so I only have pics of it reskeined.
There is cochineal, logwood, logwood spritzed with baking soda, and indigo.




madder/black walnut mix, cochineal, black walnut, and indigo, then the whole thing went into the indigo pot (by accident of course, but I like how it turned out.






Indigo, walnut, madder, yellow onion skin, and again the whole skein went into the indigo pot.

Watch out! I'm Sewing, and What would Tony Danza Do?

I need to have an apron or a sign that says "Watch Out! I'm Sewing" when I haul out the sewing machine to work on a project! This time, I actually had 2 projects, but one is secret. The one I can talk about is called the Manhattan Bag. I bought the pattern and a stack of complimentary fat quarters abouttttttt........3 years ago, from Craft Warehouse. Yeah, I'm a slow sewer. I had all of the stripes cut out and ready to sew together 2 years ago, but then I got a cold and put it all away and never had the energy to pull it back out to finish it. Well, it took 5 hours one evening, but I got it all done! I even made a pocket that my iphone fits into perfectly.Oh, you spotted that yummy St. Cupcake big top cupcake did you? Well, it matched my bag and outfit perfectly, how could I not get it? That was from the yarn crawl at the beginning of this month, that I didn't blog about.

In a situation like this you have to ask, What would Tony Danza Do??? Well, he would link to Tami's blogpost, because she did an awesome write up from the yarn crawl, and since I was with her the whole time, I don't know if I really need to try and one-up her. There's even a bonus picture of me eating almonds :)

so, here's what I bought:

2 Sivia Harding patterns from Twisted
Namaste Buddy from For Yarn's Sake
2 Skeins of Universal Star Light yarn in White and Blue from Naked Sheep
1 skein malabrigo lace in blue from Happy Knits
2 samples of unicorn wool wash and rinse

The hat that everyone recognized us by and complimented me on:

Si Capitan!
Pattern: Capitan by Rosi Garmendia
yarn - malabrigo worsted
turtle buttons from the button emporium

More adventures in dyeing

A few weeks ago I pulled out the old dyepot again to dye some Knit Picks bare laceweight and a skein of white targhee roving.

Something interesting happened with the Targhee. I originally used Royal Blue and Black Wilton dyes, but there was a pink residue left in the pot (it's non-stick, must get a metal one next time I decide to dye). This caused some pink/purple stuff to happen. I am very pleased with how it turned out, and I love these kinds of happy mistakes. I started spinning it and it is very nice and fluffy!


Next I dyed up the lace weight. I mixed up two cups, one with Teal and the other with Kelly Green. I poured at the same time on opposite ends of the pot and got an interesting mix. The first one I did not add enough dye so there is a lot of white and the second one had clumps of undesolved dye in the bottom of the cup. Even though I dyed the skeins in the same manner, the colors are not the same intensity.

Maui yarns

If there was yarn on this island, I was going to find it. Locally dyed here on Maui. 

Colorways:
Is a green sea turtle really green and whale watching. 

Vanna Overload

What can I say??? It's hard to pass up a sale on yarn!!

It started last week when I bought a couple of colors to crochet a TMNT for my cousin (incidentally, he asked for it last year...). Then I needed to get one more color for the body and all of a sudden all this Vanna's Choice jumped into my basket!! Really, what I did here was plan ahead for some projects that I want to make out of the Itty Bitty Toys book that I'm getting. I want to make the turtle/frog toy and the dress up dolly. Also, after working with the yarn I've decided that I like it a whole lot better for making amigurumi than Red Heart. So, I stocked up on different colors since it was on sale.

Yarn Wreath

I was inspired by Starbucks' decorations 2 Christmases ago. I've been wanting to make one for myself (since my local SB was stingy and would not sell their decorations after Christmas grr).

To make one for yourself you'll need:

plastic ornaments
yarn (I used scrap yarn and red heart)
wreath form
floral wire
more hot glue than you think you'll need ;)

I used hot glue to secure the yarn onto an ornament and just wound the yarn around until you could no longer see the ornament underneath. Using floral wire I secured the ornaments onto the form in a random order. I filled in the holes with smaller ornaments and when I had it looking the way I wanted, I just hot glued everything! Each place where an ornament was touching I hot glued. Then I hot glued the back to make sure they wouldn't fall off, and to cover the sharp ends of the wire.

I have a bow for this, but I haven't decided if I want to use it or not.

I just think this wreath is so festive! I kind of want to make more for the other seasons!

More F.O.s

I've been a busy little knitter! I thought I was all done with shopping for presents, and then I went to this new yarn shop that opened last weekend (Make One), and since then I've been inspired to make more stuff with the yarn I bought! I am working on a cowl for a friend's birthday, but it is after Christmas, so it's not critical knitting right now.

There is one F.O. that failed. I made one of those slippers that the Yarn Harlot was raving about, because I thought it would be a fast knit. Well, the 90 minutes turned into 2 days because I *could not get gauge*. When I got stitch gauge, my row gauge was totally off and I ended up ripping back a few times to get the correct measurement. I only made one slipper and when I felted it, it looked like a freaking baked potato, I kid you not. It was pitiful. Also, it didn't fit my foot. I brought it to knit night and my friend whose name also happens to be Rachel took it to fix it and make it look good so she could give it to her mom, who coincidentally only has one foot! I call that serendipity! I still plan on making another slipper, but maybe a darker yarn would felt better.

These are the same fingerless mitts that are in my previous fo post, using the left over yarn from those mitts, but these are shorter.



Roving from Susan's Kitchen that I spun up and plied with a thread of beads! It is very pretty in person. I am giving this to my mom, but she may end up asking me to knit something up for her.


Duet by Linda Wilgus, from the Winter Knitty
Yarn is Cascade Rustic
This is for my sister in law. I'm giving it to her as a scarf, I don't know if it's stretchy enough to wear as a hat. The linen is making it stiff. A note for people using this yarn. It bleeds dye like crazy! So wash wash wash, and use vinegar to help set the dye.


A Simple Yet Effective shawl, out of some of my handspun (Everything but the kitchen sink is in this shawl, even some beads). This is for Owen's grandmother!

Yarn Train song

Gee, somehow I wish I lived in Seattle, so that I could go on the yarn train to Portland!  Oh well, it's just as fun to meet the gals at the station!

recent f.o.s

Sorry for the lack of posting. I have had a few health problems for all of November and this first half of December. Mostly a never-ending sinus infection with 2 colds on top of that, then the most recent cold travelled to my lungs and made my asthma flare up :( I'm on my second round of anti-biotics for the sinus infection and a round of Prednisone for the asthma. If you have ever been on Pred, then you probably know it's like Speed. Be ware if you call me on the phone, I may just talk your ear off!

Then there was the issue with my bum thumb - de quervain's tenosynovitis - trigger finger -- whatever you want to call it, my hand has been in pain since September. I finally went to the doctor and she told me to take ibuprofen, wear a thumb brace and then do hand exercises until it didn't hurt anymore. Well, the pain didn't go away, so I went in again. They told me there wasn't anything more they could do and so I was referred to a hand specialist who fixed me up in 5 minutes with a lovely cortisone shot! Knitting is sure a heck of a lot easier when your hand is not hurting all the time!

So, now that I can knit without pain, here are some things I knitted up the last two weeks!

Neck scarf using a merino/angora handspun made with fur from my friend's rabbit Fast Feet
pattern: Stash by Donyale Grant


two crochet bracelets for my friend's daughters, no pattern, just made it up as I went along.


Hat for my friends' son. SW Merino/Angora. no pattern.


Twilight mitts for my friend Jen for Christmas. Alice Mitts by Nancy Fry

Big Yarn

Great big ball of yarn!

Oregon Flock and Fiber 09 - Day 1

OFFF in a nutshell: I bought way too many pretty things, met FRANKLIN HABIT! (and may or may not have gone fangirl on him), created a new spindle group called "The Delights", spent all day spinning on my new spindle and made a few yards of yarn, hung out with all my PDXKB and PDXSpinerati peeps, did not knit a stitch, and did not see any of the animals.


First thing after Angela and I got there was buy a Jenkins Turkish Delight drop spindle!


I did a self portrait and kinneared Franklin Habit at the same time! Cindy did take an actual picture with me and Franklin together, but I'll have to wait for her to post it on her blog. I'm going to see him give a talk on Monday, so I did not hog too much of his time.


Me and Michele spinning on our Turkish Delights



Tami took this picture of "The Delights": Tammy, me, Michele, Duffy, and Leila
I inspired Tammy to get a TD spindle, Michele inspired me and Leila inspired Michele (see this chain reaction thing going on?) Duffy is an honorary member with her top whirl spindle.


My purchases:
Pink BFL and pastel Merino/Tencel from Knitted Wit
10oz of BFL (the blue/green pink) from Dicentra
Turkish Delight drop spindle from Carolina Homespun
A rare gem and a skein of silkie and a pattern from Blue Moon
1oz of white pygora (Cody) from Foggybottom Farms

WWKIP Day re-cap

This year's Worldwide Knit In Public day was way more fun than last year (and I thought last year was fun).

It was held at the Cultural Arts Center in Hillsboro. Tami organized the event this year and she did a phenomenal job! She was able to get 3 LYSs to sponser the event - Kathy's Knit Corner, The Knitting Bee and All About Yarn. Not only was there "door" prizes, but there were these awesome Swag Bags (for the first 40 knitters). At knit night last week we got a preview of the bags and what was in them and I really really wanted to make sure I got one.

Owen and I arrived early to the event to see if there was a need for set up help. Not really because they had it under control, however, I took a roll of tickets for the door prizes and handed them out to people - later I found out that the store had their own people that could have handed out the tickets, but I had fun doing it, so oh well! Owen went and found us some food at the farmer's market and then we all waited until 10am when we could snag our bags! You would not believe how fast the line formed! I was at or near the front and got the coolest bag made by Sara and all this stuff inside:

3 knitting patterns - 2 by Kathleen and 1 by Cindy
3 discount coupons from the above mentioned LYSs
Yarn samples from Stitch Jones, Fearless Fibers, Frog Creek Fibers and Abstract fiber
Fiber sample from The Cupcake Factory
and a Stitch marker from Girly with a twist


Look how nice the bag is inside! There are some pockets to hold needles and also a tab for keys or something




I admit to being a fiber piggy. I traded out my abstract fiber yarn for a cupcake factory sample, and at the end Carissa gave me 2 more! I am excited to try them out, her colors are really pretty!


My mom eventually showed up to the event, but did not get a bag...she didn't believe me when I told her she needed to be there early! OH well.

As for the knitting in public part, I worked on my Cookie A. sock (Sam) from her book Sock Innovation in Nodding Violet colorway from Blue Moon. I actually didn't get much knitting done because I was talking so much to everyone, and as of today I ended up with negative done, because I had to rip it all back to the cuff from messing up the cables so much. When will I learn that I need to have a plain pattern to work on when I'm going to be talking a lot???

There was an unofficial yarn swap going on where if you brought yarn you could take something from the pile. I brought in a few odd balls of stuff I knew I wouldn't use, and the remnants of some past projects. I walked away with two cones of a purple glitzy yarn to use in core spinning.

The door prizes were pretty good this year - lots of yarn and books. I won a Rowan pattern book, that was cool!

For lunch Owen went and got us some pizza from the farmers' market. And sadly, at 2pm we all had to leave (due to a wedding).

I didn't actually take pictures at the event, because I was not thinking, but you can check some out at Cindy's blog, I might even be in a few!

Even though I'm on a "fiber diet" I couldn't resist a few sample baggies of fiber - I got a bamboo and a fiber made from milk! Cool! Both are from the cupcake factory.