New Yarn

I just got done with some new yarn. I am putting the yarn that I was going to use for the sockaploooza socks down at Knot Another Hat. Soon she is going to have all of my yarn on the website so that it can be purchased online as well as at her shop. I am really excited about it since my yarn used to sell really really well on Ebay. Also, my yarn has been selling really well down at KAH. I have sold something like 4 skeins in the last 2 weeks down there, which is a sign that yarn shopping is going back up after February was so slow.
Here is the lovely yarn that I did before. I really love the colors. My husband dyed them at our last dye party and I am quite pleased with them. He has a knack for dyeing that I am not quite sure is skill or luck. Either way I really like what comes out and it is a lot of fun not to dye alone. I decided to name this yarn Monte Carlo, which I think is fitting for it's bright colors and such. I think it would make a nice hat or something since it can't felt.

This is my other skein that was dyed by Dicentra Designs. She is incredible for dyeing stuff. Her colors are always bright and they are colorfast (something I really value in my roving). The greatest thing is too is that she names all of her colors after things from Lord of the Rings. This set of yarn, though, is from her oddball dyed stuff that she sells by the ounce. I thought these colors would be really pretty so I spun them up and named it Pumpkin Patch, because that is exactly what it will look like when it is knit up.

That's all my updates yarnwise for today. Stay tuned for KAH's site upgrade, which I am sure that I will announce on here too.

Foothills Alpaca trip

So, my friend Asher is here to visit me for Spring Break. We decided that we would go off and find Foothills Yarn & Fiber today since they recently moved to a new location. They are the other yarn store in the valley besides KAH and I hadn't checked them out yet, so we decided to go out and check them out. They had adorable alpacas and we got to feed them and visit the pretty yarn shop.
Here are there adorable alpacas. They were very curious about us and came up to see if we had any food.


There is Asher seeing if they would like to sniff her hand. The Alpaca is called Carmella and was very friendly.

There is Asher petting the nose of Casanova. He is so adorable, just look at the fluffy white baby fleece!After we had fed the alpacas there were little bits on that they had missed. Some were more hungry than others and came right up to the front. Asher has more pics on her blog!

PS. Ooooh! My Lavender Llama will have a friend at least until this post is pushed down.

Sockaploooza: Yarn Update

Well, I did a sample swatch of the pretty yarn and it really is superwash! It is the weirdest superwash that I have ever dealt with. I knit up a swatch and threw it into the wash with a load of laundry. It didn't change one bit, maybe a slight bit fuzzier, but no felting. The only thing is that I bought this beautiful roving off of ebay, just in case. So, I think that I will have a choice. I'll spin both and see which one I like better. I also got some for myself for my own pretty pretty socks.

Argh...Sometimes I hate Blogger

Ok, so my last post wouldn't post. That post being all the lovely pics of spinning my yarn for Sockaploooza. When I tried to post it up all it would do is say that there were errors. So, I tried posting again. In fact I tried posting several times thinking that the site was just down and soon it would be up. I thought that maybe it was because it was photo heavy, so I tried a couple of testing posts and they wouldn't go up either. It was at this point that I noticed in my edit posts that all it had done was repeatedly post up my one post. I checked my blog and still no post up on it. So, I tried to delete all the extra posts and all it said was error. So, today, of course, I notice that oh yes it has actually posted all those posts to my blog and that it really sucks. So I deleted all the extra posts and it should be nice and slim-lined now.

sheepy

Just because I can ;)

Sockaploooza: Making your own sock yarn

I really enjoy spinning yarn and lately I have been getting my yarn down to fingering weight so I thought it would be awesome if I spun my own self striping sock yarn. It won't be traditional sock yarn in that the stripes don't repeat exactly, but it still is super fun yarn.
This is the fleece that is Superwash. I dyed it with One Shot dyes to look like a sunset. I really like how it turned out.
I then went and carefully pulled out the fibers in layers so that it saved the different color layers.


Then I seperated the layers so that there was a close to equal amount of fiber in each pile so that I could spin each pile onto a seperate bobbin. This just makes it easier to ply later.Then I carefully drafted each layer back and forth to keep the colors fairly pure. This makes better stripes because it has long stretches of each color.

Then I spun the drafted fiber into nice stretches of color, fine spun to make nice warm washable socks.
Here's the two strands plied together into super gorgeous yarn.

I really love this yarn, but I think it has some drawbacks. I bought the fiber on ebay and I am not totally convinced that it is superwash. I am going to try washing it and see what happens. I have to anyway to set the twist. I think I might even (hark) make a swatch and see if it felts in the wash. It also is a bit lumpy, so we will see if it works. I will decide after I get it all set and everything. If it felts it might make a nice bag....

pink!!!

I got my pretties today :D Thank you!

Pinkpinkpink

Sockaploooza Update

Ok, the Knitting Olympics are over and it is time for a new project of sorts. After finding out that the pattern that I first chose would not work for my sock pal (hmmm...might just have to make them for myself) I went back to my Socks Socks Socks book and started looking again. I have finally decided on:


These are called Harry's Socks and are apparently designed for a man, but with a bit of modification I think that they will work just fine. I am going to spin the yarn for these socks, since the background is just a simple varigated yarn. I think I have everything planned out for what I want to do, so stay tuned for how to make your own sock yarn.

Spring has Sprung (or has it?)

Well, the weather man claimed that the last snow storm that we had "was the last cold spell that we would see." Ha! I knew when he said it that he would be wrong. My husband even was predicting snow for March and we were so right! I just love living in Oregon and it makes me even happier when we have a "real" winter. It has been awhile, but it has finally happened. So, here are my pics:


Here we are in spring just a couple of days ago. I just love the pretty oak trees that are near our place. They look so much like ents, especially with all that lichen. I took a ton of pictures of them, but I won't trouble you with all of those.

So, this was yesterday morning. Snow everywhere. It was quite lovely and rather soft snow. I think we had probably 4", luckily it was easy to travel through and we were able to go out and get our errands done in a beautiful winter wonderland.

Today it looks like this. You can see the snow line crawling back up the hills and the pretty Columbia River flowing all nice and blue. I think that I live in one of the prettiest places and just thought that I would share. For those of you that are wondering about where all the knitting/fiber stuff is here is a pic of my new yarn. It is 80% alpaca and 20% silk and is fingering weight, which I am quite proud of. It is also hand dyed by me. I love the colors and it was a total joy to spin

you tease!

Awww, thankoo.

But now I must plot, mwahahaha.

Surprise!

To get even with Asher for holding me in suspense while my package was in the mail, I thought that I would do likewise. I have sent her off something special that I can't post on here, because she would see it. (he he he) I just know that she is going to love it. Thank you Asher for being a great friend.

Crosswalk Yarn

This is my latest creation. It is one black thread with white beads and one white thread with black beads. Look pretty close and you can see the beads. They blend in a little more than I like, but it was a good experiment. It is for sale down at Knot Another Hat:

Muppet Quiz

You Are the Swedish Chef

"Bork! Bork! Bork!" Your happy and energetic - with borderline manic tendencies. No one really gets you. And frankly, you don't even get you. But, you sure can whip up a great chocolate mousse

The Muppet Personality Test

Blair got a job!

Blair found a job! I am so very happy and yet so very lonely it almost makes me want to cry. I am being brave however and have only managed to shed a couple when I found that he had left me love notes all around the house today. He has found a pretty awesome job. It is only for a month and runs from 8am to 5pm. The downside being is that it is all the way in Beaverton so he has a two hour trip each way. There really isn't any point in moving closer since it is only for a month. However, this company usually hires from the people that they get short term, so he has a good chance of getting the job. I haven't ever seen a case where once somebody has met and worked with my husband and they haven't liked him. He was promoted twice within the first 6 months of working in the library on campus, which is nearly unheard of. At the very least this job will mean another reference on his resume. It is for a bank and is doing data entry, so it falls in line with what he wants to do eventually. I am very proud of him and I hope that he has a very good first day at work.

In other news Asher has thought up a KAL and has posted up a blog:

Sheep Shearing

I had to post a link to this:

Sheep Shearing

In other news, I have had to take out my felted bag now 3 times. It is driving me crazy, because the stupid thing is just a glorified hat. I will try to have pics of it soon, once it is a little more developed. It is at least looking pretty for the moment.

End of the Knitting Olympics

Well, last night was the very end of the Knitting Olympics. My knitting group had their big get together and it went of rather successfully. We would have met on Monday, but we are the guests of a local cafe that allows us our meetings on Wednesday. It would be a bit much to ask them to stay open late another night of the week just for us. So, we met on our normal night and had a huge show and tell. Sarah said that 22 out of the 24 people that signed up finished. The other 2 she hasn't heard anything from, so she doesn't know. So, here are the pics that turned out from last night:




These are Blair's lovely mittens that he actually finished on time for the Olympics. They are with a number of projects that were finished for the olympics. They are right on top of a lovely cashmere sweater, next to a felted bag out of Nashua, and next to a moebius felted bag. All were really wonderful to see and hear from people what they had done



There is my Blair in his handknit sweater. This is the best pic I have so far of him wearing it, but it fits even down to the sleeves. There is always this panic that I have towards the end of a sweater that it won't really fit and I am only kidding myself.




There is Sarah handing out the awards for everyone that finished. She gave out $10 gift certificates to everyone that finished and made everyone talk about their pieces. Yes, this is the final touch that made me feel like I was back in college. Every term we would have to talk about our pieces. Oh, the nostalgia.


This was somebody who came in a bit late. I wasn't sure if Sarah had gotten any pics of it so I put it up. I just love this bag. It is the laptop bag from knitty.com. She made it from leftover yarn. I think I might need to make one of those sometime.

If you would like more pics of this event or a little more info check out Knot Another Hat's Blog and see all of Sarah's pics.