Some Beading and Some Knitting

I'm still plugging away at the scarf. I'm hoping that I can be done with it by Wednesday at the latest so that I can start working on Clessidra again. I'm trying to go through all the WIPs now without casting on something else, but seeing as I have a whole stash that is trying to tempt me each day, it may not happen. I am going to finish the scarf though:The striping pattern of the Noro really is wonderful and it keeps me working even though I detest 1x1 ribbing. It's really nice looking though.

Yesterday I also decided to try my hand at beading. I ended up making a rosary for my friend Barbie and it turned out really nice with the exception of the wooden cross bead. I feel like this really needs something nicer than a brown wooden cross on the end of it, but she likes it, so that's all that matters:I'm still thrilled that I was able to figure out how to make it with the wire and beads. Looks like some of the ones I've seen in stores, so I'm happy.

Knit on...

Whoops

Yeah, sorry about the lack of post yesterday. I completely forgot to blog before work and I realized it as soon as I got there. Anyways, I finished up the Voodoo wrist warmers for Jessica out of the remaining handspun yarn:They're not bad looking in just plain 2x2 ribbing either. Plus it was cold enough that Jessica immediately put them on and said she was wearing them all weekend :oP

Speaking of, it's Friday, so I'm looking forward to going and seeing DF, getting some knitting done on the bus, and getting out of this city for a weekend. Woot for weekends!

More on Monday.

Knit on...

Slacking Off

I slacked off yesterday since I was so tired courtesy of some idiot college kids in the hallway the night before. I didn't even get one wrist warmer done for the gift I was hoping to finish by Thursday, so we'll see if I can get two done tonight. I did get half done at least, but nothing worth taking a picture of since you all have seen the same alpaca yarn now for this whole week. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have a finished pair to show you and I can move on to work on something much more colorful.

But I still am going to leave you with some entertainment for the day. The Engineer's Guide to Cats cracks me up to no end, especially the craze over tuna and cat yodeling. Enjoy!



Knit on...

Start Cranking Them Out

Now that I'm finished with the baby blankets, I think I should start cranking out the handknits. Here's my first finished item:These are the finished fingerless mitts made for Barbie. She loves them and it's cold enough this week that she'll actually get some use out of them too! Here's the reverse side:Simple 2x2 rib for the reverse to provide for a snug fit. I made the cables mirror images of each other and I'm very pleased with how they came out. I'll write up the pattern for these and post it on here as a free pattern.

Hopefully I'll have another pair done today. I still owe Jessica her Christmas present too :oP

Knit on...

The Blob is Finished

I am now completely done with all the single crochet baby blankets that I intend to make. Here's a picture of the folded up ones to prove it!I also plied some of the Jacob fleece yesterday producing 50.75 yards of worsted weight wool. I just don't get that much onto my spindle because of how heavy it is. Here's the mini skein:It's turning out pretty nice aside from the washed out picture, so just ignore that fact. I was so happy to be done with crocheting and plying that I cast on and finished one of the alpaca cabled armwarmers:You can't see the cable really well, but it does pop in non-flash induced light. My neighbor tried them on last night and they fit perfectly, so I cast on for the second and I hope to be finished with them by tonight.

That's it for the knitting news. Hope you all had a great weekend!

Knit on...

The Blob Returns

The big blue blob o' baby blanket is still on the hook. I'm on the third and final skein now at least, so I'm still making progress. My goal is to have this finished by the weekend so that I can pack the two blankets up and ship them out on Monday. Anyways, here is the blob:I'm also still spinning on the fleece. I'm just about done with a spindle's worth of singles, then I'll ply them. Here's the speckledy goodness:I'm still spinning at least two hand carded batts a night, so if this keeps up, I may be finished with the fleece in, oh, five years :oP I'll work more on some days and less on others, so that's why I set the two hand cards' worth as a minimum goal each day.

I've been enjoying the spinning of this fleece, but I have now come across some seconds. They are causing some kinks in the spinning since the staple length on this wool is only about 2 inches anyways at the most. For such a short wool, it is scratchier than I expected, but it is still soft enough to use for garments, just nothing that would sit directly next to the skin.

That's it for today. Tomorrow, more blob, more wool!

Knit on...

Happy Green Beer Day!

It's that time of the year again where everyone pretends that they're Irish, well, except the actual Irish who don't have to pretend. It's St. Patrick's Day today and I spent a little time in my classes today telling the kids about what we do to celebrate. One kid asked me if people drank beer, so I of course told him, yes, but it's green.

He looked horrified.

So remember, green beer can scare Korean kids, so drink responsibly!

Tomorrow there will be crochet and spinning content on here. For today though, I'm going to go enjoy my one very over priced Guiness...

Knit on...

The Blue Blob

My life has been seemingly taken over by a blue blob, aka, the last-blasted-single crochet-baby-blanket-ohGodPleaseNobodyElseHaveAChild...I'm almost 2 skeins into this one, so just a little over one more to go and I can put the single crochet baby blankets behind me. Can you tell I'm really ready to be done with it? I didn't knit on the Noro scarf any, but here is a progress picture of it:I love the color sequences so far. I'm looking forward to working on this more when the blue blob is finished.

And for those of you concerned about Mr. Spindle, he is doing fine. In fact, I'm actually carding up and spinning the Jacob sheep fleece I brought back with me:The fleece is spinning up nicely, but it is a little scratchier as it's being spun. That's ok though. I wasn't planning on making anything next-to-skin out of it, so it shouldn't make much difference. I'm enjoying the process of this project though.

That's it for today. Check in tomorrow for more blob pictures and maybe some more fluff turned into singles...

Knit on...

Not Much Going On

I have knit a grand total of 6 rows on my Noro scarf in the past two days, so not much has been going on. I will get knitting done on the bus ride today and Sunday though as I go to visit DF, so hopefully by Monday I'll have some decent progress on something to show you. In the meantime, here is the finished alpaca:The skeins are small looking because I wound them around a priority mail box instead of something larger like I normally do. Didn't measure yardage either, so hope that doesn't come back to bite me.

Anyways, hope you all have a great weekend!

Knit on...

Finished Yarn, and That's About All

I finished plying the rest of the alpaca singles last night, and well, I finished at around 10 PM, so that was pretty much all the fiber-related stuff I got done. But the good news is that it is finished and it looks very nice. Here is a picture of the one I finished on Monday:I made a two ply yarn, andean plied, out of four spindle's worth of alpaca roving. I bought the roving at the Greencastle Fiber Event in Indiana, but I can't remember the name of the company for the life of me and it was not attached to the cone anywhere. I'm glad to be done with the yarn now so that I can start actually knitting with it soon. Today I'll look at patterns on Ravelry to determine just which pair of fingerless gloves that this will become.

That's really it for today. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have some progress to show you on something other than my spinning. I've just been enjoying the spinning process the past two weeks and of course now I want to start spinning up that Jacob fleece I brought back with me...

Must knit...

Knit on...

Weekend Update

Hey, everyone. I had a good weekend visiting DF, but I didn't get a whole lot of knitting done. In fact, my knitting is going to slow down considerably now since I have been told that there is to be no more knitting while at school. For some reason it was fine for 9 months, but now it's not. It doesn't bother me much aside from the productivity going down, but it will make it much more slow going since I am still spinning while at my apartment.

I do have a finished picture of the baby blanket though:It's not much of a picture since this is a giant pink square comprised of row after row of single crochet. Boring as hell and I still have one more to go. If Courtney has anymore children, she can crochet her own...

I also worked some on the noro scarf:Sorry for the shadowy picture there. Hopefully I'll have some more progress to show you tomorrow.

I also did some spinning tonight. Unfortunately, I am washing the finished skein of plied alpaca right now and it's not really photogenic at this stage, so pictures of that tomorrow. I have three more balls of alpaca to ply, and my goal is one ball a day unless I really feel like more.

Knit on...

The Random Friday Post

Noro Scarf
Originally uploaded by magicknits

OK, so I forgot to blog this morning because my throat has been killing me the past few days and I was not in the mood. I did go to the doctor this morning though to figure out if I had strep or what was causing the soreness. Turns out I had bacterial tonsilitis and a round of antibiotics and I should be back to normal. I'm already starting to feel a little less sore in the throat now, so this is a good thing.

Knitting-wise, I am madly in love with the Noro scarf. The color blending on the stripes has been so lovely looking and it just keeps getting better. You can see that I'm blogging from the school computer at the moment, so I had to use a flickr picture to be able to do so. This was the scarf picture from earlier this week. It's getting brighter by the inch.

Crochet-wise, I finished the big pink blanket. I took a picture of it, but sadly due to the throat and my forgetfulness, I didn't get it up on the blog this morning. I'll have pictures of it on Monday.

This weekend I'm popping over to visit DF and to bring him all the goodies I brought back from America. I know he'll be very happy to see some of these (read: charges and remotes) and I think he'll like some of the other stuff I brought back for him.

So that's about it for this week. It's been a productive textile week since I managed to get a whole blanket done in four days all out of single crochet, finished the alpaca roving up (which will lead to a blog post on Monday because of some frustrating moments I've had with it), and have made some decent progress on the scarf. What will next week hold? Probably more of the same :oP

Knit on...

I Have Nothing...to Really Show That Is...

I don't really have anything terribly exciting today to show, aside from four balls of singles that will probably be plied tonight so that I can finally be done with the alpaca roving:Hopefully I can get through four balls worth of plying tonight, but my goal is to just get 2 plied if nothing else. I worked more on the baby blanket yesterday too, but there really is no good way to photograph a giant pink square right now since it's cold and I don't want to drag it outside and have the Koreans stare at me this morning.

So it's a short post today. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have a finished blanket and some finished yarn to show you all. In the meantime...

Knit on...

A Spindle's Plea

I got home from work today and saw the spindle sitting on the couch.It looked kind of sad and lonely there all by itself, so I flipped it over and about screamed when I saw that the spindle now had a face!(ok, yeah, I suck with the drawing. Bear with me, I'm trying to be comical for once :oP )

The following conversation occurred:

Me: Uh, hello....what's wrong, Mr. Spindle?
Spindle: I'm sad...
Me: Uh, yeah, I see that. Why are you sad?
Spindle: You haven't picked me up since you got back here. I haven't had any new alpaca put on me in a while. This old stuff is boring now. Can't you finish up that roving?
Me: Well, I've been crocheting the baby blanket this week...
Spindle: Ask the yarn if she would mind?
Me: Huh?

I looked down to the blanket and was shocked to see another face!Yarn: Meh, I don't mind. You worked on me all day anyways today, so I could use a break.
Me: This is all a little freaky...
Spindle: Will you spin some tonight?
Me: Will it make you stop crying and stop talking to me?
Spindle: At least for now...
Me: Deal!

And so I spun...

Knit on...and don't neglect your spindles and wheels because they will be sad...

National Crochet Month and Noro-y Goodness

First off, I feel like crap today after catching DF's cold from him. I know we like to share things, but colds are not one of them. So if this post makes no sense whatsoever, I blame the Nyquil that I just took.

Firstly, March is National Crochet months. Thanks to the LimenViolet boards on Ravelry for pointing that out to me. So to celebrate, and since I had more time on my hands today at school with the lack of computer, I started two new projects. The first is a crochet baby blanket for my friend Courtney. This is the first of the replacement baby blankets that need to be made since the first ones were lost in a house fire.I really couldn't come up with an interesting way to photograph the blanket right now, so bear with me on the boring pink picture...

The second project I started was a Noro Striped Scarf using silk garden sock yarn on size 4 needles. It looks like fire and water to me so far, both being colors that I didn't realize were even in the skein until they came out.I like it so far and I like even more that it's mindless since I can't seem to think properly tonight.

More interesting stuff tomorrow assuming that my brain de-fuzzes after sleeping.

Knit on...

Hearts Abound and Travel Yarn

I finished my February Knit Picks Hearts About socks last night and I'm very glad that they are done now. While I like the way they look, I did not enjoy knitting them all that much. I found the lace bored me after a little while and I'm not too into girly designs in general (read: hearts all over the place, pink, stuff like that) so the pattern wore on me after the first sock was done. Here's the finished product on my new wire hanger sock blockers that I'll be using to photograph things to make for better pictures for you all:Instructions for making your own coat hanger sock blockers can be found here if you clicky.

So what did I learn from these socks and why did I continue them if I was hating the knitting? Well, these were my first pair of toe-up socks that I've done and I wanted to have a pair under my belt finally. I've been knitting socks for over 2 years now and I had yet to try anything other than a standard cuff down design with a heel flap heel. I was given the Knit Picks Kettle Dyed Essential sock yarn sampler in the fall/winter colorway for Christmas and I decided that I would actually follow the patterns and make the toe up socks just so I could say I finally did something different.

I also picked up some travel yarn. It's actually crochet thread, but that was all I could find aside from Red Heart and while I could use some tough afghan yarn, I was not going to buy that as my souvenier yarn from traveling. So here's the crochet thread:Also picked up the steel crochet hook while traveling. This will become some sort of Christmas colored doily in the future.

That's it for today. Tomorrow, I guess I had better decide what to work on next!

Knit on...

I Knew It...

As sent to me by Kathy:

Kindle xkcd