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.

More Yarn Dying

Can you guess what I used to dye this yarn? ....
Give up? The one on the right is beet, the one in the middle is dry mustard and tumeric, and the the on the left is pure tumeric.

For the beets I chopped up three of the roots, boiled them for a while, then drained the jiuce and put it into another pot with some vinegar. Then I let that simmer for a while, and left it overnight. In the morning the water was still very red, so I think three beets was probably a little overkill.

I would not recommend dying yarn with tumeric, it took so incredibly long to wash the powder off, I'm pretty sure there's still some specks left on the skein.

I'm not sure that to make with the yarn. It's not much, about 120 yards, so arm warmers might be the way to go.

Wee hat

A wee hat, modeled by the lovely Totoro.
The hat is to benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma society.
It's part of the Team in Training Program, and the person raising the money is looking for either yarn donations, or finished items. The first deadline is March 9th, and we have a basket for donations at the store.

Do they look influenced?

It may not seem like it (only one person drinking, and two people knitting?), but here are a couple of pics from our Knitting Under the Influence Event.
And here's Claire, signing away.
We've decided to make every Last Friday of the month Happy Hour Knit, so if you missed this event, there'll be other opportunities to sip and knit.

Oscar the hat?

Since loosing the only scarf I made for myself and managed to keep, I decided it was high time I filled that lonely gap in my heart with a hat. I found some green encore and green furry yarn in my stash - perfect, I thought, for a hat. Nope. I've tried five maybe six times to make it look good. I've tried holding them together, alternating them every row, every other row. But no, it just ends up looking like like I killed Oscar the grouch and placed him on my head.

Knitting under the influence

Book Signing & Drinks
with Claire LaZebnik, author of Knitting Under the Influence!
A novel of life, knitting, and martinis in LA.
Feb 10th, 5:00 pm
Chat with Claire, and have a drink (or two) of a martini from the book.

Star Wars

Two of my siblings are very into Star Wars, so my mother bought a year subscription to the science museum because they have a new Star Wars exhibit. Most of it was clothes and props from the movie, sometimes someone dressed up as a character from the movies would walk by.

A few models of real life robots and games involving magnets comprised the "learning" portion of the exhibit. What I learned: there was no knitting in Star Wars.

Stripey

Yup, still working on the pirate socks.

Rather stripey, yes?

sinister spindle

Our spin your own yarn class is tomorrow, and to commemorate I tried out the top-whorl spindle I got for Christmas (don't worry, not the same kind of spindle in Annie May's kit), only to find out that it wobbles! Woe.

I was able to spin some yarn, and the wobble wasn't that bad, as in it doesn't hit me in the liver whenever I give it a twirl.

Doesn't the spindle look sinister?

Grandma

My grandmother passed away on Saturday. She was having throat problems for a couple of years now, but two weeks ago she had another bad episode and went into the emergency room. She died two days after being moved to another hospital.

I wasn't able to finish her sweater in time.

If anyone would like to take over the knitting, I would be happy to give it to you. The night of her death I took the needles off the project, and placed it all in a bag. I know that if I try to work on it I'll just be reminded with every stitch how I'll never see her again.

It's nice yarn, it would be a shame for it to go to waste.

Fiber Arts show starts tomorrow

Framed Fibers: A Study in Abstraction
January 13 through January 21
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 13, 7 pm – 10 pm


Framed Fibers features works by local artists that incorporate the
fiber arts -- felting, weaving, knitting, etc, -- with an emphasis on
color and texture.

Featured artists include Regina Vorgang, Cameron Taylor-Brown, Sadonya
Antebi, Drewcilla Annese, Amy Bouse, and Karen Lockert.

And while you're in the area, check out some of the other galleries
open during Second Saturday: http://www.nelaart.org/

NELAart is also having a fundraiser tonight from 7-10 at MorYork
Gallery. Tickets are available at our shop, participating galleries,
or at the door.