Insane in the membrane

So... yeah, people who know me know that I'm more than a little bit out there. If you don't know me, be prepared to be disillusioned.

At the start of Tour de Fleece, I thought to myself... "Self," I thought, "You can definitely finish processing a fleece, spinning 12 oz of Woolgatherings BFL, and a few Loop bumps during the TdF, right?"

"Right!" I heartily agreed.

And then my Etsy Shop did well, thanks to a mention on The Knit Girllls.

And then it did better, thanks to Leslie from the Knitgirllls, Dana from Just One More Row, Steve from Dramatic Knits, and always, Lemonhalf, who made my awesome logo.

And then I got a regular RL job, taking up 30 hours a week.

And the whole "I can finish things for Tour de Fleece" idea disappeared.

However, I cannot complain. I mean, I have a very early Etsy shop that's thriving, a brand new RL job, and I STILL managed to spin for TdF!

Here it is, my TdF masterpiece.

People on the Loop group may be unimpressed, but I am exceptionally happy with what I have gotten in the last month, so winning a prize is a secondary issue.

Here I Go Again...

After promising myself that I would NEVER, EVER go back into retail, here I am, starting my own Etsy shop.

Admittedly, this is different than working for 'the man', some faceless corporation in another state. On the other hand, it also means that I suceed or fail on my own ability. Scary. If there's a customer service issue, I can't just point at Minnesota and say 'my boss made me!'

Of course, this time I'm actually selling something I love and believe in.

Ahh well, I suppose we all grow and change, attitudes and opinions are malleable, and most of all, I need more money to feed my fiber and dyeing addiction. So yeah.

The First Draft

I know more people talk to me on Ravelry than here, but still. I have a store, and I'm going to shout it from the.... middle of nowhere.

What?

There are no mountains anywhere near me!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming...

So look at this, here's me.

Bet you thought I'd dropped dead, or been in a horrible accident, or... oh, you just thought I'd gotten lazy and stopped posting here? Hmm.. Okay, fine. Be that way. You know, correct.

My excuse, let me give it to you.

Between finishing my college program, looking for a regular job, and getting my new Etsy shop ready, life has been a little nutty. So yeah, pretty much no posting here at all. Not much more on Ravelry. Practically no spinning. I can see that I've touched you deeply. No no, please don't cry for me. I'll make it.

Anyway, let's see if I have anything cool for you...

Well, there's The Sock Report. This is Janel Laidman's recent work, in convenient online magazine form. There are not only socks, but lace shawls, and even cute little toys. You can buy the patterns seperately, or all together, and I fully recommend getting yourself these patterns.

Why am I going on about it? Well, because I test knit the Semadar Sock for it. Not only that, but my one finished sock picture is featured on the pattern page. Go me, right? Even if you don't want to buy the whole magazine, you need to knit these socks. They are awesome, fast and easy to knit, and... come on, guys, I test knit them. How cool is that?

Here's my picture:

And here's my project. I tried to give some helpful advice on the nupps, since people seem to struggle with them, but they're really not so bad once you get used to them. Despite a lack of time, I've already half finished the second one, because I adore them, and want to have a matching set. You know, like socks are supposed to be.

Doubtless, there's most for me to say, most times people wish I'd shut up more often, but I'll save it for another day.

Spoiler: There will be pictures of animals. Because animals are awesome.

Look, look, it's me again!

Okay, so what have I accomplished in the last day?

This:

This is made from Kristen Kapur's (FREE!) Thorpe pattern. I dyed the fiber a few weeks ago, then spun it over the weekend, and between my last post and now, it turned into this, as if by magic. I'm disgustingly proud of the fact that I turned a hank of 3.5oz of ecru fiber into this, and am wearing it right now, despite the fact that it is 75 degrees farenheit outside. 

"But Lindey", anyone who's listening would say, "this isn't one of the things you were talking about working on at all!"

To these imaginary people, I say... "Look, I have another shiny yarn over there, let's start something new out of it, too!"

Seriously, though, I have worked on something I said I would. I've gotten this far on my Pogona:



Impressive, no? And now I'm working on a pair of socks.

Look over there, shiny!

It's a good thing elves are immortal...

At this rate, my Evenstar Shawl might get finished before the entire species becomes extinct. Wait, maybe not.

I started strong, what with the choosing and buying of items to make the shawl. Then waiting for them to arrive is always convenient for me, since it involves me doing nothing but whining about how I can't start the project yet. Then, when all had arrived and the time came, I pounced! I pulled out my size 4 DPNs and made the called-for swatch. Yeah, I jumped up a needle size from the recommendation right away. That's how this tight knitter rolls. Oddly, the swatch came out a teeeeny bit smaller than guage. So this left me with a choice. Do I knit it on the 4's, and end up with a slightly smaller Evenstar? Or do I go up a size, and risk making a very expensive mess?

This, as always, is where things always go ugly for me. Technically, both answers are right. According to my math, making them on a size 4 would make the shawl something like 58" in diameter instead of 60". Using a size 5 will make it a little bit more than 60". Is either bad? No. Can I make this very simple decision that makes no difference to anything at all? Nope.

So here's what I have, and have had for about a month now:

More than 100$ in yarn and beads, a lovely swatch, and a beautiful project bag that is languishing with no knitting being done.

For anyone who knows that they could do better than this given the same lovely items, here's where to get them:
Evenstar pattern, by Susan Pandorf
Silk Thread II in the colorway Ravenscroft, by Blue Moon Fiber Arts
Metallic Teal Green Iris 8/0 beads from Earth Faire
and last but most definitely not least,
Gorgeous black and toile project bag from Buttermilk Cottage on Etsy

No, you can't have mine. I am getting out the size 5 needles, and I am casting on for the actual shawl tomorrow. Then I'm going to stamp my little (shuh, size 10) feet and complain that I should have used the 4's, and it still won't make a difference.

As a side note, Susan's bags are AMAZING. I have two bags and a matching case for my DPNs, and one of the bags has been used as my everyday purse for a few months now. Also, Susan the person and business owner is a lovely human being to deal with. She made my first bag as a custom order with exactly the fabrics I wanted, and in this era of nonexistant customer service, she has been accomodating, kind, and all around wonderful to do business with.

For the record and as always, I am receiving no kind of compensation for shilling talking about any item or business. But go buy a bag from Susan anyway.

Anyway, I did promise last week that there would be an update that included a Loopy Ewe order. And the order was made, sent, and received. Why am I late? I am a klutz who tried to kill myself by doing a faceplant on the ground in the garage. Fortunately, I am again walking and no longer dizzy and lacking in focus... well, no more than usual.

So here are the lovelies from the Loopy Ewe:

Handmaiden Sea Sock in Topaz, Malabrigo in Aguas, and String Theory Caper in Periwinkle. They are all lovely and will make beautiful socks. Yes, I am going to make socks out of them. Yes, I think that would be considered a crime in some countries. In this house, though, we call it 'YAY, SOCKS!'

Catch a Falling Star

We're going to try a little time travel here.

First, this is what I unpinned from my impromptu blocking area (read empty carpet with a sheet spread over it) this morning:

It is the Yvaine Pattern by Liz Abinante, whose patterns I wholeheartedly recommend. Even this, a free recipe for a very simple shawl, was written out in an easily understandable way. The original pattern was named after the main character in the Neil Gaiman book, Stardust. If you have not read this book, I strongly recommend that you do so. The movie is good also, but as in nearly every case, the book is superior. Especially when the book is by Neil Gaiman.

I followed Liz's instructions for the first section, then when the color repeats started, I began each color repeat with 4-8 rows of the seed stitch, then stockinette until reaching the next color shift.

A few weeks ago, this bit of lovely was this yarn:

This yarn is possibly my favorite thing in the universe. It is 550 yards of navajo plied polwarth that contains a total of nine stripes of color, from deep purple/red to grape green and back again, with dark, almost blackish shades in the color shifts. I also made it. It used to be a beautiful braid of polwarth fiber dyed by the most excellent and skilled Cloudlover.

This is a picture of a braid of the fiber in question:

I apologise that this is not in fact a picture of my braid of fiber, because the genius that is me forgot to take a picture before starting. This is the picture that I totally stole from Cloudlover's website, sorry about that. It's pretty well representative of what I spun, but really, stealing pictures is bad! I was so impressed with the fiber, that immediately after finishing spinning it, I ran out and signed up for the Cloudlover fiber club.

I got my very first braid from her a few days ago, and am very pleased. It's not a color I would have ever bought, but I'm completely in love with it. I really want to spin it next, even though I have other plans for my next project.

Next up, hopefully Thursday or Friday:

~I have once again expanded the stash by making an order from The Loopy Ewe, and I suspect it will be here by then.

~I have my very own spinning wheel, who is so beautiful that she deserves to be spoken of.

~There is more knitting to be discussed, as I am taking on the project of doom: EVENSTAR.

Spinster!

I know, I know. Spinster is a slang term these days, for a woman who never manages to get her evil claws into a male of the species and proceed to force him into marriage, followed by the running of his household, the spending of his money, and occasionally 'the vapors'.

Why yes, I did grow up in the south, why do you ask?

Anyhow, I have recently become interested in spinning. (Jasmin of the knitmore girls, I blame you for this.) I started by ordering a cheap spindle from etsy, and buying some fiber from my LYS. This turned out to NOT be the way to get into spinning, as the fiber was insanely hard to work with, and I ended up with a nasty tangled mess instead of yarn. I complained of my woes at Hogwarts at Ravelry, (yes, I know I'm a nerd, thanks), and a lovely member there, Raederle, suggested that perhaps I should seek local spinning classes. I started looking around, and then as if by magic at my local Celticfest, I met a spinner who recommended that I join the local craft guild for help. After one session at their spinner's group, I suddenly 'got it'. Needless to say, my dues check was in the mail the next day.

After this, I went out and looked for some natural coloured fiber, something that they recommended because of the way that dye affects fiber, and got to work on the first thing I found, some oatmeal coloured CVM. (That's California Variegated Mutant, a breed of sheep, for anyone interested)

Now this was the experience I'd been expecting out of fiber spinning! I got myself two spindles: a greensleeves barebones spindle and a mid-sized ashford spindle, and it started spinning up beautifully. Then, I made a Woolery order for another 2 greensleeves spindles, and they were out of stock. Oh no! But Nancy from the Woolery called me and asked if it was acceptable for them to substitute a different spindle for the greensleeves. Well sure, why not? What do I know about spindles?

Let me tell you, I knew a few minutes after the other spindle arrived that we were going to be very good friends. It spins smoothly, and for longer than the greensleeves. Absolutely perfect. After finishing one ply on the ashford and one on the greensleeves, I plyed it all up on a Ky spindle, and then skeined it on my swift, as I hadn't yet gotten myself a niddy noddy.

After that, I washed it in warm water with a bit of Eucalan, and wound it into a proper skein.

Yep, it's uneven and overspun and a bulky 2-ply, but it's mine, and I made it from fiber. Me! Now, to knit it into something that I can show off... but what can you do with 160 yards of bulky 2-ply? I know I can do a Rav search, but the results aren't terribly impressive. I wonder if a Starcrossed Beret would work....

Ahh well, I'm sure I'll find something to do with it. Either way, I'm inordinately proud of it. I'm also now the proud caretaker of my local craft guild's Lendrum single treadle, which is growing on me like a welcome fungus. I've started saving for a wheel, but on the salary of a starving student, who knows when that will happen?

As in all posts so far, I have been paid by no one, nor given anything in compensation for any reviews I've offered. Nonetheless, buy a Ky spindle as a starter, they are awesome. Go to the Woolery, their customer service is some of the best I've come across after years of working in the field myself. I doubt you'll be disappointed.

Shipwreck!

OMG, look, it' me! It's a good thing I don't blog for a living, I'd be broke. School has been nutty as ever, but I have no complaints. Amazing, no?

What I have is knitting. Yes, knitting. Since my last blog post, I recieved my first gradience set from the Unique Sheep:

It's the Eos base, colorway Jack's Beach. It took about three weeks between order and receiving it, so order early, but it's well worth a little wait if it isn't available in your local LYS. Eos is 50% Merino, 50% tussah silk, and it's absolutely wonderful. Given the color options, I think the prices are quite reasonable. It's definitely a luxury, though.

I proceeded to knit it into a shipwreck shawl, complete with eight thousand beads pre-strung onto the yarn.

Yes, I'm three-giant-pictures proud of it. Those beads took hours of stringing, and hours of sliding beads further down the yarn, and slowed the actual knitting quite a bit. I'm OCD enough that I did not string the beads in a random way, I put a bead on every third YO in the netting. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. For the edge, I put a bead on every single YO in the next-to-last row, to add some extra weight. These beads rolled up nicely in the edge, and I love every single thing about them.

For the actual knitting, I started out on size three (3.25 mm) DPNs, mostly because I did not have size fours (3.75 mm). Before starting the madeira lace, I switched to my circular, and at every needle switch, I used one needle size smaller than called for. This turned out quite well for me, because I was using lace yarn, and only had about 1250 yards of it; I knitted one less row of the netting than the pattern called for, and only have a few extra yards. This taught me something very important about this pattern. I was using a lace bind off, and that combined with the fact that the next to last row increases to 1100-ish stitches meant that the last two rows took a TON of yarn. I was convinced I had enough to finish the called for 58th row of netting, but didn't want to take ny chances that I would be frustrated. In the end, I was so relieved that I hadn't done that last row, I could have cried. Also, I was that sick of k2tog, yo netting that I could have cried anyway.

The madeira lace was an enormous pain, and there are a few issues with the madeira lace pattern, so before you go knitting this pattern, look up the fixes!

Curlycat's explanation for the beginning of row 16
Nurse Ratchknit's fix for rows 30 and 31

It's all over but the waiting

Finally, my interminable summer term has come to a close. It's not that I haven't been knitting for the last month, it's just that the choice was knitting time or computer time. When you think about it, it's not really a choice. If I'm not knitting, then what do I blog about?

Anyway, all there is to do now is wait for my last teacher to stop posting on facebook for long enough to turn in our grades... but knitting blog is not for school drama, so we'll leave that there.

In the last month, I have:

-frogged the Stalagmites. I dislike them with an intensity heretofore reserved for knots in my yarn, and patterns that are incorrect. I had him try them on after finishing the heel, and not only did it not fit him, it barely fit me. I'm giving them another try because I am just that stubborn, and my OCD will not allow me to continue on to the next pattern in the book before finishing those darned socks. I'm doing them in KP palette now, though, since I don't want to waste good yarn on annoying socks.

-started and finished my second 'Camp Loopy' project, a pair of Wendy Johnson's Wrought Iron socks, in Handmaiden Swiss Mountain Sea Sock. Both the pattern and the yarn made me exceptionally happy. I suspect that the frogged cashmere from the Stalagmites will go into a pair of the Aran socks for men in the same book. I had doubts about the Wrought Iron pattern as I was making it, but followed it as written, and was not disappointed. I will forevermore trust Wendy. On the yarn, it's some of the loveliest, most luxurious yarn I've ever managed to spend quality time with. I take points away on the fact that it can be a bit splitty, and it's not as easy to pick up dropped stitches as most yarns, but I'm already using more of it, so those issues obviously didn't bother me much.

-Finished a new shawl, Dragon's Blood from Goddess Knits. The pattern was blessedly simple and got me through finals week without being forced to stab anyone with my lovely knitting needles. (That would have been a shame, I'd hate to dirty my lovely needles with blood.) I did have to go up four needle sizes to get gauge, so if you want to do the pattern, keep an eye out for that. Even going up all those needle sizes, though, I didn't use the full 880 yards of wool I had. I don't know for sure, but I would estimate having about 50 yards remaining. I would think if you went down a needle size or two, you could easily get it in under 800 yards.

-A few other projects for Hogwarts at Ravelry that I don't feel are impressive enough to post here. I confess, I actually used acrylic for some of them. *blush*

Finally up to the present, I'm starting my third and final Camp Loopy project as soon as I finish this, a Pi Shawl in yet more Handmaiden Sea Silk. Yes, even with the Camp Loopy discount Sheri was offering, I did spend WAY too much money on this yarn. It's going to be gorgeous, though. I thought the 'camping' theme of the shawl was perfect for Camp Loopy, and then more generally, I've been dying to try a Pi shawl for a while now.

Since I have the week off school, it is possible that I will inundate you with random updates on the shawl in question, since it's the only thing I plan to work on this week. I hope.

Hope everyone had a lovely summer, and that we're all knitting instead of committing assault on annoying people!

This is me, biting off more than I can chew.

So, since I can't actually bite into anything more appetizing than an egg white right now, apparently I've decided that I'm going to jump into more projects than I could possibly hope to complete in a timely manner.

At two weeks into this diet, I've actually done... okay. Very well the first week, and while I was very good the second week, I lost a sum total of one pound. (this is why I invariably quit diets. All that work for practically no return.) So I opted to indulge myself in a little yarn, in order to do another Kal-ish sort of thing.

The thing in question is Camp Loopy, brought to us by The Loopy Ewe. Since I am a poor college student, I have neither the time nor the money to travel to cool knitting retreats, but this one is a strictly at home event. Sheri is coming up with three projects that must be completed within the alloted time frame - a month each - and if we do so using yarn purchased at The Loopy Ewe during the correct timeframe.... well, I suck at explaining this. Go check it out, knit some cool stuff, possibly win Wollmeise.

Long story short (too late!), I used my yarn!diet goodwill from the past two weeks to buy the yarn to make my first Camp Loopy project, which will be the Elisa Shawl in Madelinetosh DK, in the colorways Ink and Ginger.

Less impressive photos of the actual yarn will ensue upon its arrival, since I stink at photography and ganked these straight from the madelinetosh website, and cropped them just to give an idea of colors. I apologise if this offends the people there, and if they e-mail me telling me I'm a horrible yarn-picture-stealer and threated to sue, I'll surely take them down posthaste.

I refuse to confess that this color choice has anything to do with Harry Potter. Okay, okay... truth be told, I'm not by any means the biggest Potter Geek, but I like the series  first five books pretty well, and enjoy the world Rowling created, even if I don't think her writing is all that and a big bag of chips. Since I probably need something in my wardrobe that is not green, I went with the closest facsimilies of dark blue and bronze that I could find in yarn format. While I'm sure other people could do better, others would complain that I'm using the book colors instead of the movies' blue and silver, and still others would just complain for the sake of complaining, this is what I decided. It works for me. Plus, all Potter-y aside, I think they're gorgeous colors and work well together. Now we'll just see if I can knit them into a shawl in under a month while dealing with school and my fountain pen shawl at the same time.

Hah!

Once again, it's official.

I'm crazy.

That wouldn't surprise anyone who knows me, but I honestly don't intend this for them. They hear me whine about anything and everything often enough in real life.

I know what I intend to post here, but since things rarely turn out as I intend them to I think I'll shut up and wait to see if I ever even show up here again before I go making promises.