Pictures

The front of our building (we're in the back).

Our kitchen/living room. Notice the couch is facing the 'fireplace,' which is of course not a real fireplace, but a gas heater that's surrounded by plaster painted (but not very well) to look like mahogany.
Duracell bunny.

Look, English sheep!
art?

The old part of the city centre. There's also several streets with newer buildings and trendy shops, but all the billboards and shop names don't really make it photo worthy.

I've arrived

Hi from England.

I've arrived safe and sound, though the first two days I had trouble keeping my eyes open. The flight wasn't bad, it was non-stop and took a mere 10 and a half hours, just enough time to watch Pirates of the Caribbean, that dog movie with Molly Shannon, eat plane food, and pretend like I could sleep on plane.

The flat is big, 2 bedrooms and a kitchen/living area, it came furnished with 2 love seats and a small washer. Washer meaning washing machine. One of the benefits of having no long term memory is that it's apparently really easy for me to replace American words with English. So far I don't think twice when saying post code or cinema (instead of movie theatre) and now I get to put washer down on the list.

We live right next to a metro station, literally right next it (the real reason why we can afford a two bedroom). It's only a 7 minut ride to the city centre, which isn't bad. The city is big, not like LA or new york big, but there's basically everything you need here, three shopping centers, all the famous English shops like Marks and Spencers and H&M (half of the tops there are A-lined, interesting ...). There's even a 'chinatown' which basically means a block with 5 or so restaurants and two small shops.

And now it's time for me to go job hunting, and after that, home. My umbrella is in the other coat, so I hope it's not raining.

New yarn!

We have new yarn.

This one is a wool/nylon blend.And self patterning sock yarn (wool and nylon) with aloe vera.

I've already snagged brown/red yarn for the "store sample."

Some pics of my recent projects will be posted on Saturday (we have a concert tomorrow night so it's going to be a long day!)

Jessamy is in england

Just got a call from Jessamy, she's in Newcastle, alive and well, and it's raining.

It was my mom's B-day yesterday, and I did manage to get her table cloth done, although the edges were a bit damp (she didn't seem to mind) from the starch I put on at the last minute. I tried taking a picture, but the cameras in our house at chronically out of batteries. Basically, it looked a lot like the unfinished pictures, but with a strip of white double crochet and a shell border of the same pink/purple border.

I'm to the armhole decrease on my sweater. yay. It's going to look absolutely nothing like the sweater I had intended to do.

Baby sweater is finished

The baby sweater I was making for a baby shower and didn't finish in time is now done. Baby sweaters do take no time at all to make, only things is, you have to actually knit during that time, and not continually rip things out for your project to ever be complete. The sweater is an updated version of EZ's baby surprise jacket, this one is in one of last year's Vogue knitting, except for a few changes of course.

Got Visa

I got my visa in the mail yesterday, booked my flight for September 10th. England here I come.

New Sock Book in

We now have Cat Bordhi's New Pathways sock book. It's the first in a series of three awesome and unusual socks. This book is cool, really, some of the socks have the heel flap on the bottom of the sock!

In other news I did not make the August 4, at 4pm deadline for the baby sweater. All I had left was sewing and seaving and making the tie, but I can't work under pressure. Jessamy was able to complete her gift though (show off), it was a cute dress made out of the rowan denim.

Visa's sent off

I sent our Visas off yesterday. Yes, it should have been done last month, but it's very difficult to get a straight answer from anybody.

I also got my first pair of glasses yesterday. For the majority of my life I've had clear vision, and not having to squint to read signs is what I emotionally actually associate with my vision, so it feels as if I'm wearing fake glasses, just the rims but with no glass.

As far as yarn store news, we had a huge shipment of encore and have restocked on bamboo.

Nothing of importance to report about my knitted projects, but I might be changing the sweater pattern yet again.

Summer Sweater?

Yes, I am working on my sister's sweater right now. No, it's not a summer sweater, though it is made out of Encore, so it's not as silly as knitting a wool sweater at this heat.

I haven't gotten as much done as I would have liked, but this is mostly due to the fact that when my hand start sweating I stick to the yarn.

I already have two thirds of the front done, and a third of the back done. I've decided to work up to the sleeve decreases on both sides, then do them at the same time.

Mom's table cloth is coming along, as I said last week (or was it two weeks ago already?) it's growing exponentially, so each row is taking longer and longer to complete.

Left over party tonight

Left over party is tonight.
Here are some pics of what you can make:

More stuff

Why hello! It's time for me to go to bed, but first! We have a new shipment of Denise interchangeable needles and have restocked on the recycled silk. yummy. Must go to bed now, long day tomorrow. Hopefully I won't have nightmares about ripping out projects (ripped about 10 inches of knitting today Found out it was the wrong guage. oop.s

Closed for 4th of July

See you on Thursday!

New yarn!

I literally squealed when I opened a package and saw this:

Merino sock yarn by Rio de la Plata

Natch! I immediately grabbed a skein of blue for myself and lamented the fact that I didn't have any #1 DPs in my knitting bag. About an hour later someone bought two skeins of blue, and I knew I had to put mine back. The sacrifices I need to make for the store...

We also have a new color of their hand-spun.

And ... a nice arrangement of bright Cotton Licous. I'm want to do a diagonal striped (so there won't be any threads to carry along in the back and snag on the baby's fingers) with the light purple and white (we do have white and black, it just didn't in the pic). Just watch, someone's going to buy my yarn ...

New Project

I've been working on this project on and off for about a week now, and I think I'm doing decent progress. It went extremely fast for the first 2 hours, then I realized that each row grows exponentially, which kind of dampened the whole excitement.
I'm also still working on my linen shirt, just did another gauge swatch this morning, will most likely measure it and make final pattern decisions tomorrow.

Feeling like it's summer

Yup, it's feeling like it's summer. Most of my knitting lately has been concentrated on my linen top,

it's almost done.

What I think I'll do to avoid getting frustrated by gauge swatches is to not make armholes, and to copy this pattern on Interweave.


oh ya, my most recent finished project is a dishtowel for Jessamy's mom.

I'm still pondering a top made of bamboo, but I think I'll start on a table cloth for my mother instead. Her birthday is in August, but I'm guessing maybe if I think of it as a Christmas present rather than a birthday present, it might get done on time.

Linen

I seem to be on a linen kick.

Jessamy's mother has a birthday coming up and Jessamy's making her some felted slippers. So I won't seem like a totaly selfish person I decided to start (and I intedn to finish) a discloth for her (she doesn't use sponges, just dishcloths).

I've also decided to just go ahead and do the back of the linen shirt, hoping that by the time I get to the top portion I'll have figured out what I want it to look like. Lets see in a week or two or three if that plan really works.

Fiber continued

So, as I was saying, I was putting the roving into the washing machine when I looked behind me and noticed four large boxes of roving just sitting around in the laundry room. We had acquired them last year, and I had entirely forgotten they were there despite the fact it had been in plain sight everytime I did my laundry.

I also found this:

carders. caching. They might also be dog hair combers, I heard you can use that as well.

In any case, I took out some of the dirt and hay and other undesirable stuff, then washed it in the washing machine with a little bit of soap. I just put it on rinse and spin cycle, so it didn't felt. It's still a little gummy, but I think it's ok, I'm letting it soak in kool aid as I speak, or write. I'm thinking of maybe using it for some needle felting experiments.

The other roving, the one which led to this discovery, did seem to felt, or at least the fibers looked a whole lot different once it was washed. It still seems to spin just fine. Now I'm fiber content.

Back again

So I used to be a happy knitter. Then came the crash, then the vacation, then the craft fair, and now ... nothing. Call it knitting ennui, call it the summer knitting blues (doesn't summer start next month?) But whatever you call it, I have not been motivated in the knitting department.

But I have been itching to spin. Unfortunately I've lost my roving and my good spindle. Lost it. Completely. It is nowhere in my room, nowhere in the living room, dining room, poof, it's vanished. Jessamy lost her glasses too... is it the Borrowers?...

So, finally I got off my rump and decided to brake out my less superior spindle and dig through the closet for harder to spin roving (a birthday present from many months ago). I found that roving, but it was a little sticky/gummy. Not as in sticky from food or gummy from gum (gum isn't really considered a food is it?), but from natural fiber aging. Or at least I think it's something fibers naturally do.

Anyway, I went online, couldn't really find any remedies, but I did find something that seemed to suggest you wash it, then I looked around for another hour (I was determined) and found what seemed to be washing instructions from someone who knew what she/he was doing.

And then, I found something in the laundry room. More on that tomorrow for now I must go to sleep.

new yarn

On Friday we received new colors of Jeannee (ok, so I can't remember to spelling). It's a cotton and acrylic that sells for $4.


We also have the new Interweave Knits. This issue has an interesting off the shoulders number and instructions on toe-up socks.
And here's an added bonus. I have no idea who made it, just found it on my desktop.

New yarn colors

New colors of Jeanee. It's a cotton/acrylic.
I'm thinking a off-the-shoulders top thingie out of the blue.
hmmm.

Pictures for Newsletter

that yarn Store - Special Slae
One of the many samples of Mobius baskets. We have 3 others at the store, if you care to see them.
Boku. Our new yarn from Plymouth. It's supposed to be similar to Noro, self striping, feltable, and has a touch of silk.

New Outback Wool color.
One of the new Alpaca Grande color (flash is annoying).


New Encore colors. Still in their bags, all shiney and new.

had a crafty time

Thanks to those of you who came to our craft fair!

I wish I had taken pictures, especially of the mime, the quintessential bad-party sign, but alas I was either running around trying to do things and help people or eating all the candy and sweets our vendors brought to share. I had a stomach ache by the end of the night.

This was one of the thing I had done on my trip to Orlando.

On the first full day I was there I had been walking around with my heavy purse and my shoulders, still delicate from the crash, were hurting.

So, I sat down that night and started to make the purse, by the time we arrived at the next day's theme park, it was done. It was just big enough to hold my wallet, a crochet hook, and enough yarn to make a preemie sweater.

My mom and sister (non stitchers) were astounded.

Hawaiians like it

I've been gone so long the blogger thought this was a spam blog and temporarily suspended my account! Spam, I don't even like spam. tastes yucky, I guess they like spam even less than I do.

Anyway, please come to the spring fair, it'll be fun. I'll have more news on vacation, new yarns, etc. later.

I heard there might be a mime there.

Paper paper everywhere

I'm away from work for 6 days, and see what happens?


Ok, well maybe you can't really see, it's a bad picture.

In any case, I was greeted on my first day back to work with shredded paper scattered about my work area. I'm guessing my boss's kittens got to the bag of shreds, or maybe the boss and coworker just wanted to pretend they had lots of money.

Store pictures

Before:
After:

Green.

We've Moved!

Hi all, we've moved! Boy do we have a lot of crap. It of course took us a whole lot longer to move everything. I'll try to have pictures soon.

PS, some of you pay heard of an accident on the 110 on Friday morning. That was me! I'm famous. Though would have preferred becoming famous in a different way.

I'm ok, a bit sore, and wasn't much help in the move, but other than that I seem to be fine.

More hand-spun yarn

So a post or two ago I showed off my hand-dyed hand-spun yarn.
I just finished dyeing the rest of the skein.

Step 1) Spin it.
Step 2) Wind it into a hank, then let it soak for at least 20 minutes with a small amount of liquid detergent.

Step 3)Dye. I turned on the heat, let it heat up for about five minutes, then I put some acid dye in first (that's what gave it the blue tint). The kool aid went next, with a small amount of black cherry poured on sections of the hank, and a large amount of grape on one side. I continued keeping it over the heat for another 5-10 minutes, then turned down the burner, and let it sit until it cooled down. Step 4) Let it dry.

Ta da.

Purple yarn

Here's the plyed yarn on the spindle (I haven't gotten around to setting it yet),

and, here's the leftover from the ply that I set and dyed



I dyed it with a little bit of acid dye first, then I poured s bit of red koolaid on part of the yarn, then put more purple koolaid than I had planned for. Why it came out like this, I don't know, but I have the feeling if I try to recreate it the yarn will just end up dyed brown. Not that there's anything wrong with brown ...

Ply away home

I finally got around to plying my second round of drop spindle yarn.

The first time I plyed I used an awkward wrapping-yarn-around-hand technique as seen here:

Yes, my finger is purple. The spindle in the background is filled with yarn I had also plyed yesterday, but using a different method:

Essentially, I put two full spindles of spun yarn into cardboard boxes. I wrapped the two spun yarns over a hook (for tension), then plyed the two yarns with a another spindle.

I've already dyed the small left over yarn with kool aid, there'll be pictures tomorrow, once it dries.

Socks ahoy

I finished weaving in the ends mere hours ago. The one on the right was the first attempt at a skull, taken from drawing on graph paper, but I thought it looked a lot like a strange primate, so I went free form for the skull on the left.

On to the next project. argh

Finished wee sweater

So I decided to make the sweater "functional" by putting sleeves. At the last minute I added a picot edging, which I think is a nice touch.

Crochet baby sweater

The sweater was supposed to be for preemies, but it looks a tad big. Like the "decorative" button holes? As you can probably guess, I don't crochet often. I still have to slip stitch around the border, and the pattern says I should pick up at the sleeves to make the sweater, but I think it looks cute the way it is. We shall see ...

knee warmers

Not the most thrilling of projects, but it's functional (maybe). I think I might try and hand-felt the actual "knee" part.


The pirate socks are almost done, Noah tryed one on yesterday, and said it fit, so I just need to do the toe on the other one, and finish it off with some duplicate stitch.