Garter Stitch Madness

So garter stitch can be the most wonderful thing you have ever done while you are sick. Or if you need a whole bunch of gifts really fast. I hadn't ever been bitten by the dishcloth bug until I found pictures of Amy Carpenter's Round Dishcloth on Ravelry. The short rows made the varigated yarn look so beautiful! Well, I ended up making 10 of them in 6 days. It was a little scary.


I can't wait till after Christmas to show you my plans for 4 of them. Let's just say that I have impressed even myself with the creativity with this one.

Another garter stitch project is baby bibs. I'm going to my cousin's baby shower this weekend so I'm racing to get 2 bibs done by then.


Making this one took 3 hours last night. I've now woven in the ends but still need to sew Velcro on to the tabs. The second bib should take no time at all, too.

In other news, I bought a drop spindle! I've been watching this etsy seller for a while and then they got chummed on Lime and Violet's Daily Chum. Well, I couldn't let there be a chance of them selling out of spindles, could I?


I haven't had time to play with it yet because I got sick and my coordination skills went bye bye. Can't wait though! And when I unpacked it, guess who had to "help" me with the tissue paper. I don't even know where she came from. Suddenly it was **poof** cat in the middle of the tissue paper. So helpful.


In other roving news, I couldn't resist this bag. No idea what the content is or the colorway. All I know is that it is from Louet. Oh, and that Kim is a crack dealer.


OOOOOO, pretty colors.

update

I feel like I haven't posted in forever! I'm really alive. I've just been sick for a week. Monday and Tuesday, I stayed home from work because I was so congested and my ear was hurting so much. Sleeping all day on Monday helped clear most of it up, thankfully. Went to the doctor yesterday and he gave me a prescription for a super powerful decongestant. Today, my throat is pretty sore but I feel soooooo much better.

Anyways, while I was sick, I did a lot of garter stitch projects but I will show you those pictures in another post. I didn't do any spinning because that was just too much to think about.

Week before last, however, I did a lot of spinning. My friend's mom sent me some nice wool roving and I spun it up as quickly as I could. I'm getting much happier with my consistency. There are far fewer uneven spots in this yarn. It came out to be 350 yards worth. What should I do with it now? I really like the tweedy effect of the two colors plied together.



I won a contest on Romancing the Yarn in the middle of October. I finally sat down and took a picture of the sock yarn. How did Barbara know which colors I would love? :) Thanks!

Not dead yet!

I'm still around (though sick and have temporarily lost my voice). I just haven't posted in a while. There has been knitting (mainly dishcloths (those things are addictive and easy!)). There have been pictures but I am lazy. I haven't been riding much but am going to try to this morning. Today is also the day for a meet-up of a couple of people who were in my class in England. Of course, I have no voice so this should be fun. Blah. But I can't wait to see them! Now I'm off to make tea and find clothing so I can go ride.

Packages!

I might not have gone to Rhinebeck but I had my own little fiber fest this weekend. On Friday, my friend brought me roving from her mom. She sent 2 4 oz. balls of wool, one dark brown and the other a light grey. I was going to take a picture of both of the balls but couldn't wait that long to start spinning it! I've spun up both balls now and am starting to ply the two together. The tweedy effect is really fun.


Lily decided to "help" me take pictures outside. She never really takes an interest in my yarn or projects. The roving, however, is a different story. I think that the smell intrigues her.


AND look what came in the mail on Friday! Yea! A box full of etsy purchases!





The seller even included a bar of handmade soap! Yum, mango spice.

Here are some more gratuitous cat pictures. She was just enjoying the sunlight so much. I kept throwing acorns to her and she would play with them for her standard 5 seconds. (Five seconds is the maximum length of time that the cat will play and no longer. This ADD behaviour doesn't help much when she is trying to catch mice.)



I have been knitting some though the spinning is taking up much of my time. I cast aside all of the other projects that are OTN and started up another one. Have you seen the Mermaid Fingerless Gloves? They are a variation of the Pomatomus socks. I've decided to knit 2 pairs for friends for Christmas. In order to force myself to finish them, I'm knitting 2 at a time but both of them in different colors. This way, when I finish these 2, I'll be forced to continue to work on the other 2 so the pairs will match. Does that make sense?


They are much further along than in this picture. I'm almost ready to start the thumb increases.

Remember this?

Remember this?


It went from that to this. . .


. . . then this . . .


. . . and finally to this!


I should have waited to post this until I had started and then finished a project with the yarn. Then the picture sequence would have been complete! :) I'm planning to make a hat, Madge, from KnittySpin with the Cherry Tree Hill yarn but am not sure what to do with the undyed.

The first skein (98 yards) of the colored that I made was much thinner than the second. With the second one (86 yards), I was deliberately trying to make it heavier than fingering weight but the yarn turned out all bobbly and uneven. That will probably be the one I make the hat out of because the pattern embraces the bobbly-ness. I made a third skein with the rest of the Cherry Tree Hill roving which ended up being about 46 yards and much closer in thickness as the first one. The only problem with all of this spinning? I'm out of roving again. Hmm, that stuff from yesterday will hopefully come soon!

Slight falling down, part II

I blame the pretty pictures. I really do. That and the lack of roving stash.



Top to bottom they are Mardi Gras, Broken Hearts, and Cowgirl Chic from CJ Kopec Creations. Etsy is a wonderful, wonderful site but very, very bad for my PayPal account. Oh, and I also blame Lime and Violet's Daily Chum where they feature wonderful etsy shops as well as having other interesting articles. At least I won't have to worry about the lack of roving stash after this comes in the mail! I just have to worry about the whole "giving back the spinning wheel to the person from whom you borrowed it" thing. Hmmm.

More crack

Hi, my name is Anne and I am addicted to roving. And it happened in a very short period of time! But first, here are some pictures!

I've finished the main part of the back of the Brennan Cardigan. It went surprisingly quickly for such a long piece of knitting.


Now I have to pick up the stitches that were put on a holder on each side and do the fun pattern. It will hopefully go pretty quickly because, as we all know, cabling is crack.


I finished and blocked the shoulder shawl that I was working on from Victorian Lace Today. It turned out really well and blocked to a much bigger measurement than I expected. I still haven't decided if it is going to be a gift or not. We'll see when Christmas rolls around how desperate I get for gifts.


Progress has been made on the Double Bordered Diamond scarf also from Victorian Lace Today. I only work on this one occasionally, though, so the progress is not quick. So far I've done 7 of the 20 repeats. Reading the comments on Ravelry was really funny because one person said "forget 20, 16 was plenty for me!" Sorry for the really bad lighting!


And one of the most important pictures of this post (well, at least to me!) *drumroll* is my first single!!! It's overspun and lumpy in places but I love it. <3


After spinning up all of the undyed roving we got at class, I kind of went on a crazy "must have roving" couple of days. It was like withdrawl. But then Kim got this beautiful stuff in! It is roving from Cherry Tree Hill and the colorway is Watercolors. The colors are really surprising because, on the website, the Watercolors looked very washed out but in person, these are so strong.


I picked it up yesterday night but got so excited about it that I didn't even wait to take a picture of the bag of it. Instead, I headed over to the meeting of the spinners guild and got to work :) One of the other ladies had a ball winder so I was able to free up one of my bobbins.


The guild meeting was so much fun. I am definitely going to have to become a member! One of the women lives on my street and has a herd of sheep. She is an omnipotent goddess. She brought a bag full of uncarded (is there a special term for that? I need to get spinning books.) locks and her plethora of tools. Then we had a chance to practice carding and making the wool look like the processed roving. I really need to learn official terms. Anyway, here is a small bit of the wool that I am going to play with later.


It was just so much fun to listen to everyone's conversations about various things like chemical dyeing and natural dyeing or the different properties of fibers. I think I'm going to learn a lot!

One of the other women brought some yarn bags that a college student made. They have pockets on the inside for needles and other notions. I'm going to be giving one as a Christmas present and then have to decide what to do with the other.


All in all, I have a new obsession and need to start looking for a wheel of my own!

New obsession

Yup, it's all over. Why did I resist for so long? Roving stash here I come!

Guess what!

Guess what time of year it is!

Yea!!! Ironically, though, I haven't been knitting that many socks right now. My goal for Socktoberfest is to work my way through Cat Bordhi's book and actually finish a pair (or two) of socks for Dad. He is 6'4" so making socks for him is a little daunting.

Guess what I did yesterday during lunch and break.

A horsie finger puppet! Black is such a hard color to photograph so sorry for taking such a bad picture. I have to make a lot more of these so they can race. I had never done any crocheting other than making flat squares but was determined to make this work. Guess you need the right incentive :)

I finished the sleeves of the Brennan Cardigan last night and went back to working on the back. The cardigan, however, is not a project that I can work on in class. (The needles make too much noise.) So I picked this shawl up again.


The border is trucking along. Why is this one so much easier to do than the one on the beaded shawl?


Inspired by everyone else's sewing projects in the blog world, I made this shopping bag a few weeks ago before I fell off the horse. Hehe, cow.


Look at the inside! Is it just me or does it look like a cow field? Highly amusing.


I cut out material for 5 other bags but just need to sit down sometime and finish them. Not all of them are the same material.

And finally, look what I saw the other night. Does this amuse anyone else as much as it does me?

Pictures (finally)

I bought some new batteries last night and finally took pictures of my swag and knitting progress. This first one is the Knit Picks order that I received a few days ago. I've already used (or am using currently) 5 balls of the Wool of the Andes on my Brennan Cardigan. The undyed yarn is 2 skeins of Bare laceweight merino. That should be a lot of fun to play with sometime soon. I haven't had a chance to use the Harmony needles yet but I love them from just handling them!


This picture of one sleeve is from early in the evening yesterday. By the end of the night, I had finished with the increases and only had another inch to knit before I get to the decreases and bind off. Whew, this is flying!


Here is the back that I started before deciding to do the sleeves first. You cast on and knit for 2 inches with the smaller needles and then change to the larger ones. In this picture I had just switched sizes. The Options needles are so wonderful because I could leave all of these stitches and just switch the tips.


This is the stuff from the Appalachian Heritage Fest. Look at the pretty roving :)


The thing that amused me the most though? This guy right here!


Baaaaaaaaa!

Progress!

Look! Progress! I've been plugging away at my Double Bordered Scarf from Victorian Lace Today and it is slowly growing. I'm coming to think of it as my escapism project. Whenever something gets too hard or boring or overwhelming, time for the simple and yet complicated looking scarf! The cashmere yarn is soooooo wonderful feeling. I waffle between really liking the colors and only sort of liking the colors.


I went to the Appalachian Heritage Festival on Saturday. It was the first year for this event but they had a pretty good turn out of vendors. It gave me a chance to do a lot of Christmas shopping. I also went a tad nuts over lotions and handmade soaps. One vendor had lotion bars that can sit out on their own little dishes. I chose a French Vanilla bar and dragonfly dish for Mom (she loves dragonflies) and a tube of Coconut Cream lotion for me. I was sorely tempted by the sheep dishes. You can't even imagine how wonderful this lotion smells. I might have to get on their website and order more. Then another vendor had chocolate hand lotion. It smells like you are putting the most delicious hot chocolate on your hands without the whole risk of burning yourself. Probably shouldn't use these when I am hungry, huh?

The many different vendors, demonstrators and animals were very interesting. I would have taken pictures but my camera doesn't have any batteries. One of the llamas looked very disgruntled by all of the people. There were so many spinners around and so much roving. I bought my first little bit of roving, 2 oz of Shetland from a ewe called Faith. I'll play with this once I know a little bit more about spinning. Speaking of spinning, there were so many spindles, wheels and roving there. Very interesting :)

There was also yarn there but I didn't buy much of it. Just this skein of sock yarn in OSU colors for Dad. This yarn is 70% superwash wool and 30% seacell and feels like silk. It should be a lot of fun to knit up.


I also got a couple of jars of honey for Christmas presents. It is amazing the kinds of things you can learn at these festival things. Two ladies were talking to the man selling the honey telling him about how they put honey on cuts and burns and it helped heal it right up. He said that many studies have shown how honey is a natural antiseptic. I also learned that the lighter honey is the honey gathered in spring. The darker kind is gathered in fall. He had just harvested the fall honey that I bought a couple of days before. Talk about fresh! He was also talking to another person about how taking local honey each day can really help with allergies.

In other news, I received the yarn for and cast on yesterday for the Brennan Cardigan. Don't you find making the sleeves last seems like they take forever? You are so close to being finished with the sweater and then you still have to finish a huge chunk of knitting. So this time, I cast on for the sleeves first rather than last. I've already finished all of the ribbing and almost finished with the increases. It's kind of amazing how quickly they are going. Guess if you are determined, things will go faster. I've also been practicing my backwards knitting for this project so I don't have to keep turning it back and forth. Very helpful :)

Newbies

Two new horses just came to the barn. They arrived last night after 2 straight days of driving. The first one is Callie and she is gorgeous!


The second is Beau. He is much shorter than Callie but apparently he thinks she is his mare.


It is kind of bittersweet having these two new guys. Two of the other horses, Sam and Lace, are going to be put down sometime soon. Sam has horrible feet and they have been getting worse these last couple of months. Now he has something going wrong in his front legs and his back ones, too. He also has a tumor in his nose that periodically grows until he can't breathe out of one nostril, then it bursts, and the whole process starts again. Lace has arthritis all down her neck and she has really lost mobility over the years. She also had a bad bought of EPM, a neurological disease that affects the horse's ability to send signals from their brain to their limbs, a couple of years ago. Also, being a gray horse, she has lots of melanomas and other weird growths. Wow, this makes them both sound absolutely ugly and deformed. They aren't really. Lace used to be one of the prettiest horses and would just float along. I can't tell you how beautiful it was. Sam was really athletic and would race across the fields ahead of everyone. Now, this isn't the case with either of them. I will miss them but it is time.

Slight falling down

Ravelry is bad. Horrible in fact. You can see so many wonderful different patterns and yarns and photos and . . . *sigh* It caused me to have a slight falling down on the Knit Picks site. *small cough*

I found this great cardigan called The Brennan Cardigan. It is a jacket length sweater with a very simple but nice design. The designer based it off a sweater that Dr. Tempe Brennan wore on the show Bones. I like the show but really like the books by Kathy Reichs that the show was based on. I've been looking for a sweater jacket for a while so this design is perfect! My size requires 1800 yards of yarn.

So I was on the Knit Picks site looking at those new Harmony needles, deciding if I wanted to buy some or not. I finally decided that I did want to buy some and then thought, "Hey! I can get the yarn for that cardigan/jacket from Ravelry. They have some pretty worsted weight on here. Let's see, that comes to a total of 16 skeins. And I don't have enough laceweight, let's add 2 hanks of undyed yarn." *another small cough* It's probably a good thing that most of the Harmony needles were on back order. I was able to get a pair of 2.5 mm circulars for socks and a set of 3.5 mm tips. I love that the distribution centre is in Grove City because they shipped them yesterday afternoon and they are already at my post office. No, I wasn't stalking USPS's order tracker. Why do you ask? *cough*

In other news, I finished a pair of baby socks from Cat Bordhi's new book. I really like the way she does her wraps. They look very clean. Sorry for the bad lighting. I felt to lazy to actually set something nice up.

I finished the pair of toe-up Monkeys and just need to weave in the ends. I liked working with the yarn but was really annoyed that 2 different dyelots had been joined in the middle of the skein.

I started a new project from Victorian Lace Today with laceweight yarn I got in England. It is going to be the Double Bordered Scarf. As you can see, not much has been done on it yet. I didn't really like this color combination in the skein but really liked it once it was balled up.

I'm back to working on the Shoulder Shawl from Victorian Lace Today. I stopped working on it because I ran out of yarn with a couple of inches left on the border. Monday night I sat down and ripped all of the border out and put everything on holding needles. Last night I picked a smaller border that will hopefully take less yarn to make. I started working on the new border this morning before I had to rip myself away and go to work. I'm getting to the point that I am having too many WIPs on the needles. Hmmm.

Ouch

**Blogger is being really weird so I've reposted this post will all of the sentences/paragraphs corrected.

So yesterday, I hit dirt HARD. I was mounting Capone and, before I was settled, he decided to take off bucking. It would have been alright if I had been fully in the saddle but being only half mounted I had no chance. Definitely one of those times when you can see everything happening in slow motion. You know that you are going to fall but can't do anything to stop it. I ended up hitting the driveway (thanks horse) even there was so much grass around. The driveway isn't asphalt but limestone. Not sure if that is any better.

Now usually, I always hit my right side when I fall off. Even if I fall off the left side of the horse, I somehow twist around and hit my right side. This time, however, the streak was broken. I landed quite squarely on my butt. Didn't pass out this time but couldn't really get up and catch the horse for a little bit because my breath was knocked out of me and the world kept going blurry. Once I finally staggered up, I had to walk down the entire driveway to catch the pony (took a break in the middle to sit/hang over the bank jump because my vision got blurry again). The other horses had wandered to the front of the front pasture and had been calling Capone so he went to visit.

After catching Capone, I walked him back to the mounting block, got on, rode one time around the arena, and promptly got off. Very promptly. If you aren't a horse person, getting back on might have seemed a little crazy but it really was necessary. He was such a good boy then. No acting up at all. He even seemed a little contrite but that might of been him wanting to get fed. :)

Yesterday morning, I was the height of efficiency and it was a little scary. I had to take the car into town to be inspected so Dad can use it to respond to emergency runs. They have been fixing a bridge on a road that serves the entire north side of the township. Repairs started in the middle of July and have been going on ever since. Because I have to take back ways into town, the barn, and work, it adds 10 minutes to even the simplest trips. Anywho, I decided not to go back home after getting the car inspected. Instead, I did something radical. I went to the library. Shocking, I know. Even more shocking, I got my assignment for class which is due in 2 weeks completely finished. This is simply astonishing. Usually, I am working on it at the very last minute barely getting it finished before turning the assignment in. It probably helped that this assignment was so much fun. We had 20 questions that we had to answer using an almanac. Have you ever looked through an almanac? They are wonderful things. I love all of the random information you can find in them. For instance, do you know how many quarts are in a Nebuchadnezzar?* Or even what a Nebuchadnezzar is?**

Later, I went to the yarn shop and hung out for a while. Right as I was starting to think of leaving, it got really, really busy. There were people just looking around, searching for yarn, and wanting help with their knitting disasters. I helped a couple of people with their socks from Cat Bordhi's new book, helped another woman with the sleeve of a fair isle sweater, and rang up other people. It is funny how quiet it can be one minute and so crazy the next.

I have also been doing a little bit of knitting this week. Mainly, I've been sewing Christmas presents because I don't think everyone is going to get knitted presents. I can't wait to share the pictures of the stuff I have been making but that will have to wait until January. :( Back to knitting! The ribbing of the toe-up Monkeys has started so they should be finished soon. I have also gotten a few more inches finished on the beaded shawl. That thing is taking forever to finish! I really can't wait until Mom brings my camera back so I can take pictures of this stuff!

* There are 20 quarts in a Nebuchadnezzar.
** A Nebuchadnezzar is a unit of measure for champagne. I love library school.

Avast!

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day. Arrrrrr! Did ye see this piratey yaarrrrrrrn shirt? I be off to walk the plank.

Monogamy sucks

I've been staying loyal (mostly) to the beaded shawl I have been working on for the past month and a half. I'm really bad about finishing projects. Starting them is easy but finishing is very hard. So I decided to force myself to finish up some projects and not start new ones until the WIP numbers went down.

This self-imposed limit on the number of WIPs is getting REALLY hard to follow and really boring. I like the project still (though the shawl was getting a little old when I reached 700 some stitches) but I keep looking at different patterns and my fingers itch for new yarn to play with. Fickle girl that I am.

The toe-up Monkey socks were one of my "finish all of my WIPs" lapses. I started them when I couldn't look at the beaded shawl any more. They are now 1 lace repeat from the top ribbing and should be easily finished. I just have to sit down and actually work on them. They went with me to the wedding this past weekend but I didn't get much done. A lace pattern is too hard to work on in a dark car or while imbibing. Also, when you are writing a paper in the car on the drive to PA, it is hard to get any knitting done. On the way home, I worked on the shawl instead of the socks. That helped me get all of the charts done with it and now I am working on the border.

Blah, must finish shawl. So close to being done. So close!