Crafty Girly

Easter Weekend

I hope everyone had a good holiday this past weekend. I had a nice weekend relaxing with my family and spinning away. Well, semi-relaxing if you count working on a 1,500 word paper that's due in two weeks relaxing, but for the most part it was nice. So what did I accomplish? Well, have a look...   This first one is Rhubarb Pie. The picture really doesn't bring out all the colors as I wish it had. While spinning this all I kept thinking of was a delicate rose with the blushing pink and powder greens that's in it. It truly is a beautiful colorway, one that I want to use for a shawl for myself. I'm not sure what I'm going to use it for yet, but I was thinking something with a lot of leaves. The second one is my baby. This is my first attempt at handpainting and I'm really happy with how it came out. I used Jacquard Acid Dyes, that if you read my previous post you'll see that as much fun as I had I made a huge mess, and I think I still have a pink toe because of it! I wanted to spin something to knit socks with, and I'm not sure if I have enough yardage, but I'll figure it out soon enough. If anything, I can make them short ankle socks or something to that effect. As is, I live in Miami. It doesn't exactly get very cold around here to justify wearing wool socks around town, but I just can't seem to give up my fascination for wool socks. They're just the softest, squishiest, and nicest things on my feet. I had a great time with these though, and I'm looking forward to when it stops raining long enough for me to dye some more. I refuse to dye anything inside the house after the hot pink explosion I experienced last time. So, I've got those two finished projects, and I'm also working on spinning up the Super Secret Project that's got a Christmas deadline, Margarita's Seaside, and I just got Neopolitan from Spunky Eclectic, that was part of their Colorway of the Month Sale that I want to spin up and do something with as well. By the sound of the Spunky forums on Ravelry, I should have some more fiber waiting for me as well when I get home, since the fiber club batch has been sent out! I can't wait! With all the fiber laying around, and all this knitting I want to do, how am I ever going to get the paper done without freaking out at the last minute?!

Busy, busy

Loads of spinning and plying done today. More on that tomorrow at a better time, when I'm not so tired and when I can take purty pictures.

I ' m so proud!

I tried my luck with hand painting some of the superwash merino fiber I have laying around the house, and I'm so happy with how it came out! I did it! I learned to hand paint and it came out pretty cool, if I do say so myself. I'll have to post pictures later as I totally flaked on taking pictures while I was in the process, which is probably better that way because I know I would have ended up dying my camera. As is I had a hot pink explosion in the bathroom and almost dyed the sink, counter, and floors from the bathroom to the kitchen. At one point my hands were pink and yellow, and I still have a hot pink toe, but that's ok. I learned to hand paint which is so much more important then having a pink toe that only I'm going to be able to see anyways. I can't wait to spin this up and see how the end product is going to be. I already have an ideas of what I'd like it to look like once I'm finished, so lets see!

My car hates me

So it's taken me a couple of days to get over this, but I need to get this off my chest. My stitch n' bitch group meets on Mondays at a location about 45 minutes away from me, which is fine. I enjoy the drive there. This past Monday I was all excited about going up there. I get out of work, I fondle the striped sweater that I've been trying to finish and I start driving. Traffic is the usual hell it is during rush hour, but no biggie. I'm happy because I'm going to my stitch n' bitch to meet the girls, talk all things fiber, and knit my heart away. The route I normally take cuts through some bad sections of town, but I normally don't mind because I zoom past them on my way to the expressway. So I'm about half way there, I see the expressway. I start merging to the lane I need to be in to get on the on ramp, I go to downshift so that I could start slowing down before my turn, and my car is stuck in 3rd gear. I pull over, I start messing with the clutch to see if maybe I'm not pushing it in all the way. I turn the car off and on and see if maybe it's a fluke, which I should know better because it's a mechanical transmission, not a computerized one and I can't reboot it. I get out, I look under my hood to see if my clutch cable snapped and that's why it won't disengage the gear, nothing. It all seems to be in place, it's something inside my transmission. Stealing from the Knitting Virgin, I scream "FUXX!" and make a call. I finally stop panicking enough to take a look around and realize that I'm not in the greatest part of town. I have people sitting on the corner intently staring at me. So I'm sitting there thinking that there really isn't much I can do. I can't move the car because I'll wear out my clutch, I can't really do much of anything except sit there, so I start knitting and forget about everything that's around me. I start knitting away on the sleeve for the striped sweater thinking, "if I can't make it to my meet, at least I can try and finish this sleeve!" Finally, the guys in the corner decide to ask me why I won't try and start my car. Mind you, this to me is a really stupid question because I know what's wrong with my car and I know they assume I'm a stupid girl that knows nothing about my car, but what they don't realize is that I know my car inside and out. I know every noise it makes, I know when somethings wrong, and I know when it breaks down what's wrong with it, even when everyone else is telling me I'm wrong, in the end I'm always right. So I look at them with the most sarcastic look I can muster and tell them, "if that were the problem I wouldn't be sitting here. My transmission just went out." They all simultaneously give a big, "OOOooooh!" and leave me alone. So I keep knitting away on my sleeve, jamming to the music, and feeling a bit carefree. Finally, my boyfriend arrives to pick me and the car up. I grab the sleeve that at this point has a good 6-8 inches on it and I wrap it around my stepsons arm to see it's coming out, and guess what? It's too freakin' small!!! The thing wraps around, but really tight and I can't possibly have him wearing a sweater that's too tight on him. So I spent two hours sitting on the side of the road, in a bad neighborhood, during sundown, knitting on the only consolation I had for not being able to make it to my Stitch n' Bitch meeting, only to find out that I had to rip it back and start over again in a bigger width. Needless to say that when I got home from this entire ordeal, I popped open a Bacardi Mojito Pomegranate wine cooler (which are quite good by the way) and started spinning the latest fiber on my spindle.

Etsy

I'm going to start slowly updating my Etsy store and adding some of my freshly handspun fiber, so go check it out! I've added the Seaweed yarn and will add Broken Hearts within the next couple of days. I'm also working on some more right now and am expecting to dye and spin some Merino within the next couple weeks. I've got some stitch markers up right now too.

Score!

I love etsy, about as much as any other crafter out there does. It's such a great place. I was looking around on Friday trying to see what's out there, what I would be interested in, things of the sort and I scored, BIG. There's a couple of things that I've been wanting to nit for my mom, and I was able to get everything I needed to make her completely hand made items. First I scored a pound of Merino roving for cheap I'm still in shock over it. I pound! I went ahead and ordered it with some Jacquard dyes so I can try my luck at dying fiber as well, and make my mom the first knit object that I ever dyed, spun, and knit. She's been wanting me to make her something, and I figured now was a good time. Now that I feel I've gotten fairly good at knitting to produce actual wearable objects, I feel my spinning as gotten to a point that I could spin decently spun yarn that will work the way I want it to when I knit it, and well, we'll see about dying. Another thing I scored was a pound of Tussah for incredibly cheap as well. This is going to be for mom's Christmas present, so I can't talk too much about it, but I got the fiber I wanted to use for this. I'm so excited about this one because I've been giving a lot of thought to this project for my mom and I have finally made up my mind about the fiber and the pattern and I can't wait to get started on it. I think she's going to love it. I hope she does.

More finished spinning projects

I've finished a couple more spinning projects. Here's Broken Hearts and Phoenix drying outside: That's it for today. Leave me comments. Tell me what you think.

Fortune Cookie

Random Fortune Cookie quote:

You will always have good luck in your personal affairs

The Library...

totally rocks! I didn't realize HOW MANY knitting books they carried, and pretty modern one's too!

Random Thought

Why do bosses think they can treat you like ass simply because they're the boss?