I have finished spinning the yarn from the fiber I dyed last weekend.

Yarn name: Circus Worsted

Fiber Content: Superwash Merino Wool, Bamboo, Tussah Silk, Firestar

Purchased as: part of the “Spinning the Seasons” fiber club from Knit it up. This was the January colorway “Fresh spun snow” before I Kool-Aid dyed it.

Yardage: 89. I ended up only using about 2/3 of the fiber because I unevenly split my batt into singles and one of them was much shorter than the other two.

I did a photo shoot before work this morning.

I’m extremely happy with this yarn and I can’t wait to see it knit up into the cowl. (ravelry link.)

My sister and boyfriend are so nice to me. My room was rather bland and boring, but I figured it was ok, as it was functional.

For Christmas, the two of them got together to get me some awesome vinyl decals for my wall. And they are amazing!

It helps me forget how cold and wintery it is outside.

I am not totally happy with this sweater for several reasons:

1) I’m stupid and used a yarn with acrylic in it for a lace cardigan. I steam-blocked it, but the lace couldn’t quite stretch enough and there’s a definite problem with the fit because of it. The only way to fix this really would be to rip out the whole collar and re-knit it with more stitches, but I might be too lazy for that.

2) Well, one pretty much covers it. I will still wear the cardigan, but I would like it to fit better.

Out after the massive snowstorm.

Pattern: Queen Anne’s Cardigan by Christina Wall

Yarn: Recycled Thrift Store Sweater Yarn

You can see the gauge problem in this picture under my arm.

After shoveling out the cars today, Dick and I took a walk around our neighborhood to do a photo shoot. We ended up in the park and took a few shots. It was pretty fun watching everyone freaking out about how much snow there was and how hard it was to drive on the very, very hilly streets where I live.

I’m not actually very happy with how this sweater turned out, as I said above. I shouldn’t have made it with acrylic yarn, and I should have put extra stitches in the collar to make up for it, but I guess I didn’t think well enough. And I KNEW it wouldn’t turn out well while I was knitting it, but it was one of those things where you do it anyway.

I might go back and rip out the collar and re-knit it with more stitches, but then I might be too lazy. The whole thing is a little bigger than I’d have liked, especially the sleeves, which I made longer.

Here’s the obligatory photo of the back, and you can all go back to shoveling yourselves out of feet of snow. Unless you’re lucky enough to live in the southern hemisphere, in which case, happy summer!

Here is a recipe for “Baked kool-aid fiber,” which I made for two primary reasons:

1) I wanted to participate in the ravelry group Ply by Night’s spin-and-knit-along, which this time requires kool-aid dyeing.

2) Regular kool-aid dyeing uses a microwave. I do not own a microwave.

Step one:  Gather the ingredients.

The fiber was easy, it was what I got for the January portion of the Spinning the Seasons fiber club by Knit it Up. The colorway was called Fresh Spun Snow.

Knit it up!

It’s quite pretty. There’s Superwash wool, silk, bamboo and firestar in it, which you can read.

So fluffy.

HOWEVER, it’s white. And I’ve never been too much of a fan of white. I just find it so PLAIN. It’s a pretty color and nice and bright, but things always look prettier to me in color. Also because of the spin-along, I decided to dye it.

The second part of obtaining the ingredients was not quite so easy. For the spin-along, we were supposed to get grape, black cherry and cranberry (I don’t believe cranberry actually exists, so I figured I’d just get something red.) I went to the grocery store: they had grape, orange and cherry. Annoyed, I went to another grocery store hoping for more selection. This time I got grape, orange, cherry and pink lemonade. I figured I wouldn’t find any better, so I decided on getting grape and deciding that cherry can stand in for both black cherry and cranberry. I went to two more grocery stores just to be sure, but they apparently don’t like interesting flavors of kool-aid where I live.

Oh well. So I took the fiber and put it in water in a cake pan, then poured the kool-aid over it. I didn’t want the koolaid to dye all of the fiber because I wanted it to make a heathered yarn.

It looks like cake.

Then I baked it at 400 for about 20 minutes until the water around the fiber was clear. (I’m not going to show that, because it looks basically the same except the water on the sides of the fiber is clear.)

Then I set it out to dry.

Here's the whole thing after dyeing. It looks like one of those ink-blot tests.

I got a big surprise. The grape separated out, so the silk took the red and the wool took the blue! Who’da thought?

It looks pretty layered like that.

This is only the middle section after I split them. It got almost all of the grape.

Now here’s a picture of it pulled into roving, so you can see how it makes a heather.

This is one of the red sections.

Omnomnomnom. My baked kool-aid fiber is just delicious!

I have several WIPs right now, which is unusual for me. I’m kind of finding it overwhelming. I have all these different projects that I can be working on and I feel like I’m not getting anywhere with any of them.

First of all, there’s still that sweater that I have to sew letters on. I have only sewn on like two letters, but I need to sew on more, and I kind of want to get that done, only I don’t like sewing. But I think I’ll do that this weekend, do it all in one go and get it over with this weekend.

Secondly, there’s the white lacy cardigan I’m working on. I have one sleeve left, and that shouldn’t take long, so I’ll probably do that this weekend too. I guess I’m donating this weekend to UFOs.

Thirdly there are the socks I’m knitting for Dick. I was afraid they were too small for him so I stopped until he was in town to try them on. They were in fact too small. (The pattern for some odd reason was written with 3.5 inches of negative ease. On a men’s sock. On size 1 needles. Without elastic yarn. I do not understand this fact.) So I have re-worked the pattern to be with zero ease, which I think will be better, and have begun re-knitting them. They now look like they might fit on a man.

My fourth project (besides spinning) are some gloves. I was going to knit the Kingdom gloves from knitty with the leftover yarn from my mom’s shawl. Unfortunately, there were a few problems with this idea. First of all, I apparently have massive hands, as according to the pattern measurements, my wrists are XS and my knuckle circumference is L. I checked my gauge, and was a little small, so I figured I’d make the XL gloves and have a somewhat loose wristband. To make matters worse, the gloves are cabled and knit on size 0 needles, and I apparently thought it was a good idea to use black yarn.

So, I spent a week on the bus knitting the wristband of the ill-fated glove, continuously thinking that it must be too small, but I continued until the row when you make the cuff in the round. Then I found this horrifying fact:

It doesn't fit over my knuckles!

Sorry for the crappy pic, btw. It’s hard to take pics of your own hand at night with the flash. Ugh. When will it get light enough after work that I can take pics outside?

Anyway, these stupid gloves won’t fit over my knuckles. So they will be frogged.

I don’t like it when people are unintentionally rude. Because then you feel bad about being angry with them. “She didn’t know better” you tell yourself, but then, she really should have.

Not that the particular story I’m talking about is particularly important or rude.

Yesterday I was sitting on the bus working on Dick’s socks. I still had about a quarter inch of them. A woman said, “Oh, what are you knitting?” and I expected one of those normal conversations where people say “I could never do that” or something along those lines. I replied that I was knitting socks. She said “Girl, you got a LONG way to go.” And I said, “Yeah, I know, I just started last night.” Then she replied, “You need bigger needles.”

I think I know what size needles I need to knit socks, thank you. And I think I have a pretty good idea of how much farther I have to go. You do not need to pretend like you know what I’m doing better than I do when you likely don’t knit.

On the bright side of that bus ride, I met a girl who’s in nursing school so she can be a midwife. I’m pretty excited about that because, as you may or may not know, I do aspire to that profession.

On the bright side of my day yesterday I figured out how to knit two socks at a time on two circular needles. I’m pretty excited. I still find it rather fidgety and I find that the yarns are getting tangled everywhere, but my hope is that that will improve as I get better at it.

I currently have two WIPs. This is a little sad for me because I tend to like knitting one thing at a time. However, the cardigan that I’m working on has become too large to easily fit in my purse, so it has become a stay-at-home project. Here is a picture of it (from about a week ago. I’m on sleeve number 1 now)

Did you think you were going to get a picture of the whole thing? That would look stupid.

The pattern is Queen Anne’s Cardigan (ravelry link). Apparently, I just found out in making that link, the pattern has, in the last month I’ve been knitting that cardigan, turned into a for-sale pattern, so I guess it’s good that I decided to print it out when I did. And that I printed it out and don’t have more questions. That always sucks when free patterns you’re working on turn into for-sale patterns halfway through. Though I must say that it’s a nice pattern and the designer certainly deserves to make money for it.

As I said, I’m much farther along than that. I’m lengthening the sleeves to three-quarter length and I’m about at the elbow of the first one.

I just cast on this evening for some socks for Dick. He’s been bugging me lately wanting socks because I’ve been bragging so much about mine, so I finally broke down and started his. I don’t have a picture of the sock yet (I only have about a quarter of an inch of 2×2 ribbing, you can use your imaginations).  But I’ll show you a picture of the yarn (wound on my brand-new ball winder I got for Christmas from Dick’s sisters)

Yum yum cakes.

The yarn is a self-patterning yarn that Dick picked out for himself. Since I wasn’t sure how much yarn I would need for a man’s sock, I bought two balls and figured I’d make myself a coordinating pair. Also this way I can use each ball for knitting two at a time.  The yarn is Wisdom Yarns Marathon Socks–Twin Cities.  I can’t seem to find a link at the moment to that particular yarn. Wisdom yarns has their sock yarns, this Marathon Socks line, but they name different things after different cities. I’m not sure I understand it really, but Dick’s sock yarn is named after the twin cities, which is cool because I’m a twin. And because the socks will be twins. So it’s really just twins all around. Either way, Don Juan* down there at the bottom likes it.

*Yes, I did just mention Don Juan so I could put that tag on this post. Why? I’m in the mood.

So, something new and excited happened for my fibery life last month, and I have yet to share it with you! (How could I?)

My Mommy and Daddy were nice enough to give me an AWESOME Christmas present. What is it? I’ll tell you:

Don't prick your finger, Sleeping Beauty!

A spinning wheel! Mom and Dad didn’t pick it out, they just gave me the money to get what I wanted, which is really the best, because they wouldn’t have had any idea. I got it off etsy, which was really just luck, as the woman was selling it for $200 pick up only, and just happened to live half an hour from here. So Dick and I went over to pick it up one day. It is a Country Craftsman spinning wheel, which is a reproduction of an old flax wheel (mine doesn’t have a distaff). Anyway, it’s in pretty good condition, so I’m pretty excited about it. I’ve started spinning some yarn on some gross old fiber that I bought to practice on. (Eww, it smells like basement.) But oh well, it was cheap, and we all love cheap practice things. Though I can’t wait until I have done the whole pound of it and can move on to prettier, nicer yarns. I really hope that the fiber doesn’t make my basket smell like basement forever and throughout the universe in perpetuity! Oh no! That would be horrific!

The other bad thing that happened regarding the wheel is that it came with five bobbins (three 2 oz. and two 4 oz.) the large bobbins won’t fit on the flyer! I’m not sure how that happened. But it’s alright. The wheel was so cheap I can just afford to buy some new ones. I already bought a lazy kate, which came wrapped in Newspaper from New Zealand in 1999! It’s an Ashford Lazy Kate, so that explains New Zealand, but the 1999 is a little beyond me, because the yellowing on the pages made it obvious that it’s been sitting in the same place since 1999. Hahaha! It still looks like new inside, so who really cares, other than that New Zealand is hilarious.

Anyway, here’s a picture of me dressed in my “pioneer” dress (the print is women picking apples) while I’m spinning. It’s pretty awesome.

Also, my fiber matches my carpet. I'm so chic!

I finished these socks on December 3, so yes, I am a little behind. But after this I’m just about caught up to real time!

So, here are my second socks:

My socks don't have to match! So there! Nananabooboo!

Pattern: Naniboujou by Chrissy Gardiner from Knitty Winter 2008

Yarn: Knitpicks Palette in Garnet Heather, Turmeric and Masala

Needles: Size US size 0 and 1.5. The 0 was for the non-colorwork sections and the 1.5 was for colorwork.

Modifications: Instead of having one main color, I had two and switched them on the heel, toe and cuff so that my socks are opposite of each other.

I’ve wanted to knit these socks ever since I saw them on Knitty in Winter 2008. In fact, they might just be the only socks I ever saw the pattern for and thought “oh my god those are beautiful I must knit myself a pair!”

So I finally got around to making them. I had wanted the main color to be red like in the original pattern, but I didn’t have enough of the red yarn, which was left over from my Chevrolace socks, but I didn’t want either the yellow or the orange to be THE main color, because honestly, I’ve never been much of a fan of either yellow or orange, so I decided to split them evenly and do a total of one toe, heel and cuff in each color. It was a good decision really, because I LOVE these socks. I cannot get enough of wearing them. (And neither can my sister because she works in a warehouse that doesn’t have heating, so I lent them to her.) They seem to be holding up well even though they’re knit with Knitpicks Palette, which doesn’t tend to be the sturdiest yarn ever. However, they’re knit in colorwork on a tight gauge, so I imagine they’ll last at least a while.

As you have probably noticed, my extremely avid readers who I know check my blog anxiously every day biting your nails hoping for an update, I have not been blogging for a while. There is a reason for this, which I imagine is quite obvious. I have been working on gifts pretty much nonstop since the last post in, I don’t know, October sometime?

Anyway, as my gift knitting is starting to wane and I begin to have a little time for blogging, I’m going to start updating you all on what I’ve been up to and what I am up to, provided it isn’t supersecret present knitting.

I suppose we’ll go chronologically and I’ll continue as I feel like it. Therefore, I present to you my mother’s birthday present (presented to her in November) and modeled by my beauteous twin sister:

Her hair might be prettier than the shawl in this picture.

Pattern: Shipwreck Shawl by Knitting Harpy from Knitty Spring 2009

Yarn: Knitpicks Gloss in Black

Needles: All of them that the pattern called for with the exception of the size 11.

Modifications: I finished it a little early because I ran out of time for knitting it.

I really enjoy working with beads, and this time I was able to put them on the yarn more easily. This pattern was also simple and quick and I enjoyed it quite a lot.

So did my mother. She thought it was a beautiful present. Yay!