Briar Fiber

moving again!!

2006-08-30T06:48:00.000-05:00

I tire of blogger. I'm moving to wordpress! The new rss feed is:

http://www.briarfiber.com/me/?feed=rss2

or

http://www.briarfiber.com/me/?feed=atom

Yeah. this means I'll be posting again.

2006-06-29T14:08:00.000-05:00

i give you this pic of me spinning. That's it. I know I havent been around, I've just been busy as hell. SO busy I havent even been knitting really.

ps anyone have any clue what the fuck the "world renound" triple lindee patern" is thats being left as spam everywhere?

who?

2006-05-24T23:52:00.000-05:00

Guess who's not dead? Me!! I'm making a bulleted post because I'm frigging tired and lazy as hell. If you're looking for pictures, then I'm terribly sorry to dissapoint, but there arent any.

There has been knitting! Heathers sock is on the grow (I've been knitting on it when I can in class and on breaks at work), and becaue I hate myself I've started that other scarf that I'm pretty sure that mentioned a post back. Or maybe I didn't. It's gonna be hawt when it's done!

Being a retail slave isn't as terribly as I thought it would be, even if it pays jack-shit. The minimum wage in WI goes up to 6.50 on the 1st of June so here's hoping that I get to see a pay increase! I"ve been working eleventy billion hours, but it's my own fault. Training is sparse in the land of retail apparently, so I would have to ask to come in on my days off so I could work and learn new things. I hope you all get to enjoy your holiday weekends, because I have to work all of mine. :-(

I hate myself for it, but I may have to drop out of the Sweaters From Camp Knit-Along. Fair Isle just wont be happening for me at this point in my life, unless its something smaller. I've decided that if I don't get everything cast and readied within the next week or so, that I'm going to concede and use the yarn I havent dyed yet, along with the Celtic Knots charts to make me some kick ass socks. Certainly not a sweater, but much better than having the materials and doing NOTHING with them.

I need to get my hands on a copy of Elizabeth Lavold's Viking Patterns for Knitters. I specifically want to see how she did mitered corners with cabled patterns, and then I want the book to go away. It looks as thought it's trapped in my library system until the end of time, and I'm too impatient for that. I may just buy the damn thing, but I just don't know if it's worth the $15 I can get it for. Anyone out there with this book have anything good to say?

Pictures of something soon, I promise.

And there you have it. I have become the most boring person in the universe. I need a drink!

Flargh

2006-05-06T21:09:00.000-05:00

I know it's not a word, but it's sooo how I feel right now. Nothing new to show and tell. You all may feel free to pelt me with stones for not responding to your comments in a timely and polite manner. I suck, I know. Truth be told, I don't know my head from my ass anymore! Finals are this week, which means lots of cramming and relearning info that I'd previously only remembered long enough to pass a single exam. You know what I'm talkinig about. Hmm? The point? Oh, it's that I sincerely appreciate your comments, and they are not going unnoticed.

Knitting Front

Heather's sock will not grow. I've decided that the laws of physics are eating the yarn, or something. I'm half tempted to throw a tantrum and mail poor Heather one finished sock and one barely finished sock still on the needles. I'm thinking that she'd hire someone here in the states to harpoon me with dpns, however, so I won't be doing that. ;-)

I've, fortunately, convinced a friend of mine that fug-fur is indeed fug, and that Riattro is really as novelty as anyone should ever get. This pleases me to no end as she commisioned a scarf from me and she wanted "classy novelty yarn". And by "classy novelty" she meant fug-fur. *shivers* Yeah, I don't know where I'm going with this. I'm not knitting fug-fur.

The new Interweave came to my house today. I'm sure plenty of you have seen the preview already. I have mixed feelings on this issue, as I did on the last one. I don't know what's going on over at IK, but the picture quality has really been going down the hill. It seems they're going for more of the artsy blurry shots than anything clear and usable. It's hard to tell whether I like half of the patterns or not! Hell, Vogue uses models that are painted to look like cracked out dryads in fucked up geometric scenes straight out of a Seusian acid trip, and yet they manage to provide clear photos of the knitted pieces, so why can't IK? That being said, I think that I like the Cambrige Jacket. The picture sucks, but it's easy enough to see what it looks like. I have 8 skeins of Cascade Sierra floating around that might work quite well for that piece. I just not sure... Maybe if the picture weren't taken in the broom closet of a coffee shop I'd be able to tell better. Whatever.

Well, I'm off to study for finals. Good luck to those who are in the same boat as me, final-wise.

A real post with pictures and everything!

2006-04-07T05:06:00.000-05:00

WARNING: Terribly disjointed post following. Forgive lack of proper continuity.

Lordy it's been too long. I'm sure I said it before, but I had always thought that the people whose knitting blogs that I came across that always went on hiatus when school was in session were just being silly. Oh how wrong I was! It's odd, the little free time I do have now, I just don't really want to spend doing anything. I want to do NOTHING. Who knew that thinking and learning could tear you up so easily.

It appears as though I will definitely be failing trig, which is terribly disappointed as I KNOW it(trig I mean), so therefore can't understand why I'm doing so poorly. I'll chalk it up to being rusty and take it over this summer. I'm almost thinking this is one of those cases of a student's learning style clashing with a teacher's teachng/test style. IF I were tested on what we actually did for homework, I think I'd be okay, but as it is the tests are on hypothetical advanced equations that are briefly looked at here and there during lecture.

But yeah, there has been a little bit of knitting going on around here. I finally started Heather's other sock, though I'm stuck in one of those "knit for 3 hours and still only have 2 inches" type time tears.

I swear, it's going to be done before summer hits. These socks are so meant for spring that I HAVE to finish them before then.

I also randomly decided to knit a little purse thingy (for no discernable reason) out of some Daria Multi.

Sorry for the asstastic shot. I could not get this thing to photograph well at all. I don't know what I could do to make it do what it's supposed to, but there it is. All I have left to do to finish it is sew on a button, and weave in the ends. This will likely sit unfinished until I find a groovy button to go with it. I've no idea who's going to be getting the bag when it's done, though.

That birthday I mentioned? It was my mom's 50th. I appreciate all of the belated birthday wishes none-the-less, however. It was the usual affair, family members every where, dinner blah blah blah, but I made the cake! Her favorite cake in the world is a white cake filled with strawberries with a whipped cream frosting (no, not cool whip). Considering that I made this cake with far from professional tools, a limited ammount of time, and while hung-over, I'm very pleased with the way it came out.

Most importantly, my mom loved it, and that's all that really matters. By the way? If you ever get the chance, DO make your own whipped cream. It kicks the shit out of Cool Whip any day of the week.

I received a super fabulous package in the mail from the wondrous Mrs M. This is too delicious, and yes, you should be jealous.

Folk socks by Nancy Bush (as you can plainly see, and once again, I cannot recommend this book enough) two delicious skeins of Footpath sock yarn(this stuff is simply delish, and coincidentally in one of my fave colours) and a delish ball of Guernsey 5 ply. And as if that wasn't fabulous enough, check this out:

She had Folk Socks inscribed for me by Nancy Bush herself! Too cool, huh? It's hard to adequately show the appreciation that such a gift deserves through typed media, but rest assured, I am glowing inside (still). Thanks again, M!

I can't believe I haven't blogged about this already, but last month I went up to Viroqua to visit Kindred Threads. I happened upon them while looking for places that actually selll spinning wheels that may be close to me (I wanted to meet a few in person), and I have to say that it's quite a lovely shop. Though the spinning wheel selection wasn't fabulous, I now know that I definitely don't want a Louet or Schact. The fiber selection, however, was fantastic. Most of the fibers to be had were locally grown and processed (local anything always pleases me to no end) and dyed there in the shop itself. There were plenty of lovely handspun yarns for sale as well, along with the usual high-end yarns you'd expect to see in a decent yarn shop. I would definitely tell anyone that's visiting this area to head on over. The owner (whose name escapes me at the moment) was very "earthy" and a delight to speak with. Though I drooled muchly, I only came away with two balls of roving.

The one on the left is hand dyed merino (about 6 oz, I believe), and the one on the right is a delicious natural brown corriedale (roughly 3.5 oz). The prices are rediculously cheap ( I believe I payed $17 for everything I got), and Tipper? They have TONS of alpaca. Just another reason for you to come back this way, babe.

Okay, I think that about covers everything I need to say at the moment. As everyone else seems to be shitting themselves over daffodils pushing their ugly little yellow heads out of the ground, thus heralding spring I think I should share the bit of spring that I have occuring in my kitchen.

This sweet little thing went to sleep for the winter and is now awakening for the spring. What is she, you might ask? Deadly Nightshade.

Hope you all have a good weekend!

Holy shit

2006-04-04T05:50:00.000-05:00

It's been almost a freaking month since my last post! There's been knitting, and living, and failing and tests, and not-sleeping, and baking, and a birthday, and fabulous packages recieved, and more (oh my!).

But, this is one of those not-sleeping 72 hour periods, so I'll be arsed if I can keep my eyes focused long enough to tell you all about it. I have 2 exams coming up, but I swear there will be a post before friday.

Oh, and a PSA before I head out:

If you aspire to do magical things with socks then you NEED Folk Socks by Nancy Bush. NO really, you do. It's magically delicious in every way you can possibly think and then some!

I refuse to give up my electrons!

2006-03-07T06:25:00.000-06:00

Crazy title, I know. It's midterm week for me here at Chez Briar and one of my exams is in chemistry. I woke up from a nightmare last night because I was an elemental silver atom and Mark was trying to steal my electrons to make me into an ion, that bitch! Maybe I'm studying too much? In any case, that's what I'll be doing all week, so little to no knitting for me.

I was surprised to see that many of you liked the Dirty Dishrag yarn! I mean, I personally like it, but as it was a mistake I was really expecting the "I'm sure you'll get the hang of it!" types of comments. So what have I learned? You all have awesome taste as I really like Dirty Dishrag myself. In any case, I've accidently taught myself how to make variegated-ish yarn. I've only had the time to dye 2 more skeins of needed yarn (both brown, and both too boring to show), and actually no knitting has gotten done. None. Can you believe that?!

An aside to Maria--I emailed you from a different account, did you get the email? If not just ask your questions in the comments and I'll answer them here as soon as I can.

That's it folks. Spring break is next week and some REAL knitting is going to get done around here!

If at first you don't succeed-

2006-03-01T17:31:00.000-06:00

--throw a major tantrum in which you throw things across the room and scare every small animal within miles away forever. Or you can just realize that you just can't deal with what you have on your plate at the moment and move onto another dish entirely. I've done the latter even though I sorely wanted to do the first.

Observe:

I've decided that I am NOT going to do the Celtic Knots Raglan. Oh, I'll do it in the future, I just don't want to futz around with it right now to get it to such a state that I want to look at it. For now, it's forever (forever being a time relative to my fickle and ever-changing mood) on hold. The yarn that was reserved just for it will not go to waste however. What you see above is the beginning of the dyeing process. I will dye my yarn (I suppose it's really over-dyeing) until I have enough colors to make the Afghanistan Rug Jacket. That pattern requires little to no futzing, and I wanted to make it anyway. I'm just being super frugal and dyeing instead of spending more.

The skein on the left is the very first skein of yarn I've dyed-ever. As such it didn't turn out as I wanted, but I like it anyway. My friend Bobby aptly named the color Dirty Dishrag. The second skein is where I figured out what I was doing. That's exactly the color I wanted out of it and I couldn't be more pleased with the results. So there you have it. Celtic Raglan out, Rug Jacket in. Oh, and yeah, that's a baby swatch for the rug jacket on the bottom. Woot.

An update of sorts

2006-02-21T12:00:00.000-06:00

Christ, it's been 11 days since I've last posted and I havent gotten anything done, it would seem. I managed to dig up the other ball of koigu* for Heather's ~~sooper seekret~~ sock, and its now being inched closer and closer towards my project basket. Eventually the needles will meet the yarn there and something real will happen!

I've started my Celtic Knots Raglan for the SFCKAL twice, now. I ripped it out the first time because I followed the instructions and got something ugly, and now that I'm ignoring a couple instructions, it's still ugly, but I'm not ripping it out. Either I'm completely fucktarded, or the creator of this pattern is the sort of person that enjoys taking candy from children while kicking puppies. I'm only 4 rows into the damned pattern, but they're 4 rows that are hard won with lots of increases literally on top of increases (ugly and holey) and wonky short rowing instructions that I now wish I'd had the good sense to ignore and substitute my own not-odd-and-full-of-holes method. Or maybe I've completely and totally misread the instructions and I'm not as talented a knitter as I thought.

Though it's not much, it took far more time than I care to admit (the damned purl rows!). You will, at this time, kindly ignore the uneven tension. There is a great possibility that I'll be ripping this out and starting over. The pattern as written is just frigging weird, and I'm not liking the results. I know there's another person knitting this sweater, so I half want to hold out and see what she does.

Anyway, here's my problems thus far. I'll give you a fabulously (zomg its so bad) made image of where shit is so you can understand what I'm talking about, and then slap me if I'm just being dumb. Ready? Okay!

All of those little dashes are markers that I was supposed to place as I worked the very first raglan increase round. Super kosher and easy. That horrific pink blobby marker is the starting marker. 4 sections of 5 are the raglan strips, the two sections of 16 are the arms, the section of 48 is the back, the section of 24 is the front neck, the two sections of 8 are where the short rows are to take place, and the 2 sections of 4, well they're just part of the front. Now you know what everything is.

After you place the markers all the way around, you're supposed to drop the beginning marker. No biggy, except it sorta tells you where the short rows begin on that side. That was my first mistake. Then you're supposed to knit across the shoulders and back to the first marker of the 8 stitch section on the opposite side. You drop the marker, knit one in pattern, slip one, replace the marker, and wrap and turn and purl back to the other first marker (you know, the one we just dropped) and do the same. Rinse, lather, repeat. Am I maybe misreading that somehow? I'm assuming that when you knit back that you're supposed to knit up the wrapped stitch from the previous turn before you wrap the next. I mean, the short row placement in such a way makes sense for symetry, but damn does it look ugly when you knit those wraps up.

I'm trying to decide if it would look bad if I worked the short rows starting with the stitch at the end of the 8 stitch section (on the neck edge), and worked out from there, then knitting up all of the wraps in on fell swoop like you normally would. I'm having a hard time picturing it though, so I'll likely make a swatch. I'm also wondering if maybe that was what she really wanted me do, but if that was the case, why move that marker around at all? Meh. Someone tell me something!

Do be brutally honest. I don't learn by people sitting idly by and clucking to themselves while leaving me in the dark. If I'm being a fucktard, let me know!

Oh, for those that asked about the sock pattern--yes I'll be writing up the whole thing when I'm done. The pattern stitch is called Open and Closed Fans, and can be found in Big Book of Knitting Stitch Patterns, if you just cant wait and want at least that. ;-)

Head explodes

2006-02-10T09:03:00.000-06:00

Note my absence, bitches! I've been reading blogs when I've had the chance, but I haven't really had the chance to post anything. Or knit anything, for that matter. And here I scoffed at those who claimed no time to post or knit because of school. Well, I scoff no more!

The good: I totally aced my chemistry exam today. Woop!

The bad: I totally bombed my precalc exam yesterday. I was actually expecting this, however. Our teacher is evil. He never gives us nice decent equatioins mixed with pointlessly hard equationis--he only gives us the hard. Naturally the test was full of the equations that were covered very little and that I didn't understand at all. Pffft. I'm not worried about it. The next chapter is full of easy arcs and radius shit, so I'll drag my grade up. Fuck you log functions!

The random: I dropped my lit course. I hadn't realised how much homework and studying was going to have from my real classes, and the literature we were reading was horribly depressing (big surprise there, I know), and uninteresting. I have nothing to contribute if I'm not interested in what I'm reading, not matter how magically symbolic the prof tries to tell me the reading is.

And that's it. I've basically just been focusing on schoolwork. Oh, and getting drunk on the weekends, but that's all part and parcel with the college student lifestyle, isnt it?

;-)

Sooper Seeeekret

2006-02-02T21:30:00.000-06:00

If your name isn't Heather X, then you can click here. Then if you want a close up of the pattern stitches you can click here. But only if you aren't Heather.

That is all.

Bulleted update

2006-02-02T00:40:00.000-06:00

School is not what I anticipated. UWLax totally rapes your brain and then sends you home with tons of salt (homework) to pour all over your fresh wounds. That whole syllabus thing that I was dreading? Yeah. Didn't happen. The professors seem to feel the same way about the syllabus. Barely five minutes were spent looking at the things, and then class was begun! Also? I've already had 3 tests. Wtf? So yeah, if you're wondering where I've been, I've been doing mountains of homework and required reading.

Yarn, yarn and more yarn! The yarn for my Celtic Knot raglan arrived. The colours are deliciously subtle, and I'm glad since that was exactly what I was going for. More yarn came (god, like two weeks ago now) in the form of a half-surprise from the lovely Heather X; orgasmic discontinued Jaeger Chamonix in a soft grey, and some scrumptious Rowan Cotton Chenille (why did they discontinue this stuff?!). You should definitely be envious.

On the "I bought even more yarn that I don't have time for anymore" front, I picked up a skein of Ornaghi Filati Merino Oro to make a lace shawl that may never get ~~finished~~ started for a friend's wedding in June. This stuff is delish, to be sure, but I almost had an aneurism trying to ball it up. The skeins come all wonky and folded so that you put it on the swift with a few strands out of place, and that way while you wind it rips, knots and makes you want to scream. I got so tired of spit splicing the crap at one point that I just started knotting it. I'll deal with it when I get there. I have NO idea how much yarn I lost to very nasty teeny knots that I had to ~~rip out while screaming profanities and throwing the delicate strands across the room~~ carefully cut away, but I'm hoping it wasn't more than a 100 yds. I do know that Mark had to leave for a bit because I was getting so excited, and he was afraid for his life. I'm truly torn on whether to recommend this yarn or not. I guess if you have infinite patience, then go for it. Otherwise just admire it and move onto something that's more nicely packaged.

My needles finally arrived! (Yes Jackie, this means the addis are finally on their way to you.) I was able to get about an inch more done into my Irish Mock, but I still don't have a full pattern repeat done. For shame, I know. I finished one super-not-so-secret lace sock, and I was able to painfully complete a "quick" swatch for the celtic knots raglan. Yeah. Quick. There's nothing quick about it. No, don't try to knit fair isle on 2 double point needles using the cheater method. It's more tedious than pulling out a tooth with a spoon. Just buy a couple extra skeins and cast on a larger number and knit in the round. The results are prettier too, I promise.

Well, that's it. School, yarn, needles, a touch of knitting and tons of homework. What have you all been up to?

It's obvious that I hate myself

2006-01-23T03:13:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow (I suppose it's really today now) at 7:45am I begin, once again, my persuits in education. Knowing damned well that I would have to be in bed early so I could get up early, my body conspired against me. Somehow or another I woke at 5pm. Yeah. Don't even ask. Apparently I needed 17 hours of straight sleep or something. While this may surprise/shock/awe/disgust some of you, it doesn't surprise me in the least.

It is obvious to me that I secretly hate myself. Every time a new semester comes I ALWAYS sleep late the day before classes, and usually don't sleep the night before classes at all. If I do happen to sleep I may get 3 hours of sleep, tops. So while the rest of the students are staring blankly at the professor while he/she drones on about the syllabus (honestly, mail me the damn thing so I can just learn something on the first day of class) I'm struggling in vain to stay awake. I don't know why I do this to myself, and I never will.

Before you ask it, no, I'm not excited to be going back to school. Despite the fact I transferred in a goodly amount of advanced biology credits, I have to take the university's required biology classes before I can get back to my core. This means that I will be learning things with a bunch of 18-19 year olds who mostly don't give a damn at all (forgive the generalization and ageism). Also, other than the class at hand, I'll have little to nothing in common with these people other than the fact that I too was 18 once, and perhaps I may share the same genitalia with a couple of them. *sigh* I just want my damned degree. I've been in school for too long! Learn from my indecisiveness people.

In knitting news, I've managed to finish nothing on my Irish Mock because I don't have my new needles yet, and the damned addis are really hurting now for some reason (psychosomatic, I'm sure), and I've finished one ~~sock~~ sweater of two that I'll be sending off to someone. Secret picture tomorrow. Or today. Whichever doesn't kill me first.

Michelle tagged me for that 5 strange things meme. Combining the power of laziness along with the inability to disappoint, I'll be linking to it in my other blog here. As I've already tagged 5 people before, you are all off the hook. ;-)

knitalong created!

2006-01-20T18:44:00.000-06:00

The over all consensus seemed to point in the direction of "yes", so I've gone ahead and created the Purling the Pounds Away knitalong. Take a look and email me if you want to join!

Knit to fit

2006-01-19T17:47:00.000-06:00

I had an idea tumbling around in my head and I'm trying to figure out if it would be worth it to put it into effect. I'm thinking of starting a knitalong where you knit the next size down from what you usually knit, while the same time adhering to a diet/excercise program so you can indeed wear what you're knitting. Sort of like weight watchers meets a knitalong. You wouldn't need to pick a specific project, hell you can even use a pattern that you were going use for another knitalong. No harm in being in two knitalongs! There would be a communal blog for us to post our diet/excercise/knitting progress and to encourage each other to our goals. There would be no specific start date, and no specific end date for anyone. You set your own limits.

Does this idea sound retched and insulting, or does it sound like something feasable? Everyone's input would be greatly appreciated.

Buy my needles!

2006-01-17T04:15:00.000-06:00

Here's the dillio. $6 a pair, payable through paypal, add $1.50 for standard post no matter how many sets you snap up. Drop your name, what you want, and your email in the comments and we'll go from there. Though I don't actually have the original packaging, I've only actually used the sz 6 needles, and the sz 1. Otherwise they've just been hanging out being unused. Sz 7's in original package still. All Addi Turbos.

So, here's what's up for grabs (only one set of each):

US 1 (2.5mm) 40"/100cm
US 2 (3.0mm) 40"/100cm
US 5 (3.75mm) 32"/80cm
US 6 (4.0mm) 32"/80cm
US 7 (4.5mm) 32"/80cm
US 8 (5.0mm) 32"/80cm

Shameless, I know, but I've got to justify buying more yarn somehow. ;-)

ETA: Damn, you girls are quick! ~~Only the sz 6's need a good home now.~~ That's it! All of the needles have found new homes, and for the most part all are shipped ('cept the 6's). The yarn has been ordered for the celtic knots raglan, and I couldn't be happier. Thanks you guys!

In which I learn an important lesson, and little gets done around here

2006-01-16T18:08:00.000-06:00

Disclaimer: Nothing but rambling about knitting stuff ahead. Skip if you don't give a damn.

Once upon a time, in a land not so very far away because it wasn't really a far away land at all, but from this very same laptop, I decided that I would be brilliant and order several addi turbos in 32"-40" lengths for the sole purpose of magic looping. This idea seemed ingenious at the time. After all, I'd only need ONE needle in every size for any damned thing that I pleased. Thus, the needles were ordered and there was much rejoicing in the house of Briar.

Though I would gaze lovingly upon my collection of coveted addi turbos, I found that I never reached for them, instead reaching for a multicolored set of double pointed needles, or a smart looking 10" set of Susan Bates aluminum sexiness. "But still", I said to myself. "When I want to use them, I can." And peace and harmony continued for what seemed a very long time.

I've discovered that I HATE magic looping. I hate it a lot. It's awkward and finicky, and ladders are just waiting to happen after every turn. You'd think I'd be smart enough to have at least TRIED the technique before blowing my money. Well, you'd be thinking wrong. So now I have about 8 various sized needles that I just don't want. I want a 16" and a 24" for every one of those super long and pointless needles that I have. I'll likely be selling them all off for about $5 apiece, so if anyone wants some ridiculously long addi turbos--I'm your guy.

On a somewhat related note, I'm not getting very far in my Irish Mock at all. I'm using a pair of the aforementioned addi turbos, and I have to hold the stitches so tightly to keep them from flying off the slippery needles that my wrists start screaming in pain after about 2 rounds, and 2 rounds a day just isn't cutting it. I'm thinking that I'll buy a set of 24" addi bamboo needles and just buy another set of 16" when I need them later on. I just need something with more grip on the stitches so I can ease up on mine. What little I have so far is looking lovely, however. Donegal Tweed was definitely made for showing off stitches.

I figure that as long as I'm going to be ordering new needles, that I may as well go ahead and order more so I can join the Sweaters From Camp Knitalong. Now this is a book that my library has, so I went and took it out so I could peruse the patterns. I've decided on the Celtic Knots raglan. Only because I'm cheap, and because steeks aren't involved so I don't need to worry about the yarn not sticking, I'll be using knitpicks Palette in nutmeg and twig. I think I'm going to change the colors around every other full band just for variety and interest, though. We'll see what happens.

Say hello and goodbye

2006-01-09T18:40:00.000-06:00

On Friday my wondrously huge cone of Donegal Tweed* arrived. I was so thrilled that I cast on for a small circular swatch right away. Once the damn thing dried (it took all freaking night!) I was able to ascertain my gauge and cast on for my Irish Mock. 3 inches, half the day, and about 3900 stitches later I looked down to admire the work I had so far. Only I didn't so much admire as I cringed and then stared wide eyed at the error strewn terror I'd spent half the bloody day making. No, I did NOT take a picture. The evidence was quickly removed from the needles and unraveled before anyone could see the horror that I had made.

My problem was silly. The coned yarn is sized for weaving/machine knitting, so it's very teeny and thread-like until you wash it. Of course I washed my swatch and witnessed this miracle transformation, so I thought nothing of using the yarn straight from the cone. I was going to wash it when I was done, after all. The thing is, when you're doing random cabling and ribbing with what amounts to thread on sz 6 needles, you can't really tell what the hell you're making. I tricked myself into thinking that I was totally doing fine and kept going. *sigh* Needless to say, the rest of the day was spent skeining and washing hanks of yarn so that I could SEE what I was doing later.

I cast on AGAIN on Sunday morning 3 times, because I don't know how to count. The third was the charm, thank whoever. After the third cast on, and the first half of the stitches knit (and then tinked because I still couldn't count and had screwed up the patterning) I tossed the thing to the side to await this morning. Finally, I have something to show. I should have more, but this is what I have now:

About 2 inches where there should be WAY more. I also have about 2 inches missing from my bottle of merlot. This is just the ribbing. You can kinda see the squiggly zig-zaggy thingies if you squint and slam your head against the wall really hard before looking back at your monitor real quick. I have maybe an inch or two more before I begin the main sweater body. Until I get at least one repeat into the body you won't be seeing this again, so say, "hello" and "goodbye", now.

Before the yarn came I was spending time with the following:

A very sexy Koigu sock and a mitten that may never get to be a mitten because I've already lost interest in it. I'm really digging this koigu color. It reminds of rose/tan marble. The sock will definitely become a sock. I'm still knitting on it on and off just to take a break from the ~~pine needles~~ Donegal Tweed. I'm off for another glass of wine and possibly more knitting. I think I may just give my wrists a break, though.

Cheers!

*Donegal Tweed is NOT soft. It's relatively soft when knit up, but knitting with it has been the most painful experience ever. Imagine knitting with juniper, or cedar, or pine needles, then bind it with rusty razor wire and sprinkle it with gasoline and salt. That's what it feels like to knit with. I promise, the finished fabric is MUCH nicer though.

Non-knitting news

For the first time in years I went to the dentist and received an all clear! This is remarkable because I have the worst enamel in the entire universe. If I so much as look at chocolate cross eyed I get a freaking cavity. On the down side, I DO have a cracked filling. But I have no cavities, yay!!

ZOMGWTFBBQ!!!11one! FO's?!!

2006-01-04T12:06:00.000-06:00

Sometimes I wonder if people come across this blog and think to themselves, "So what the hell is this? Is this supposed to be a knitting blog? I mean, he talks about knitting, but he doesnt make a damned thing!" It's completely true. I do talk about knitting more than I knit. I'm totally a process knitter. I have swatches going all of the time. Charts are always being written and revised, and not a damned thing is getting done. I'm happy though, and that's all that really matters, right? Right?!

Hmm? Oh right. FO's. These are really nothing too exciting, but they please me. It's two hats, each one knit in one evening of spacing out in front of the TV. Er, that's one evening each.

First up we have a hat that I made for my friend Joella. (No, she's not a knitter. I know, I know, it's sad.)

This is just a basic K2P2 ribbed hat that I pretty much knit on the fly, making up the pattern decreases as I went. As simple as it is, I'm actually pretty pleased with it. The yarn is Cascade Quatro, in ummm, the purple color, which has been sitting on my shelf for about a year now collecting dust. Joella is being a good friend and letting me make her something just so I can use the damned yarn.

I don't know if anyone else has used this yarn (especially in this color), but damn did it bleed like hell when I washed it. It took 4 washes to get the water clear. Oddly, the color didn't change one bit. Also? I hated knitting with it. It's as splitty as cotton and kept untwisting all during the knitting. I definitely do not suggest it. Pretty though. *Shrug*

On to the next hat.

Another horribly basic hat knit on the fly, only this hat is for ME. Can you believe that it's the first hat that I've ever knit for myself? I mean just for me. Not as in the very first hat I've knit ever. It's K1P1 rib, knit up in just under a ball of Queenland Collection Kathmandu Aran. Supposedly it's the same exact thing as Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran, but they were both in the shop that I bought them in, and I can definitely say that the Kathmandu was softer. Or I'm just crazy. Either way, it looks like it's being discontinued, so do treat yourself to a ball so you can make a hat for yourself. I promise you'll thank me later.

I actually have 2 balls left over, and I'm thinking of matching mittens. [Funny story. When I told the woman working the shop that I was looking to make a hat, she somehow convinced me that it would take 3 skeins to make it. I must have been under a spell from the squishy soft goodness of the yarn, because I know better.] I'm assuming that I can get a mitten per ball since my hands arent as big as my head and I got a hat with just under a ball. Someone please tell me I'm right.

Completely unknitting related (and rather abrupt, I know), I have to share the prezzie that Tipper gave me because it's freaking awesome.

It's a Ukrainian Easter Egg! She made it all by herself (gods she's talented). The process is called pysanky, and from what I've googled, it looks like something that someone like me should never attempt. Ever. Not only would there be dozens of broken eggs, but I'd go insane if anything didnt do what I wanted it to. I'm a perfectionist when It comes to drawing and such. But yeah. Tipper? Verah talented and fabulous. I love this egg to death!

PS Yes. I really am that white. Burn in the summer, pale in the winter. Irish skin.

Irish Mock, or A good reason not to be knitting

2006-01-03T06:37:00.000-06:00

I'll totally admit it. I'm obsessed with this sweater. More gorgeous shots found here. Do you not love it? Is it not wondrous?

Since I don't have $900 to blow on a book (or even $350) I've been spending lots of time with pencils, graph paper, and needles and string. Most attempts at recreating the central motif, and the smaller motifs that are chunks of the central motif, were failures until I happened across a stitch pattern in the new stitchionary that I bought. It was one, teeny, small chunk of the whole. That little teeny small chunk of the whole allowed me to tinker and build until I finally had it!*

Oh. And maybe I played a little Nintendo DS. Just a little.

But still! I beat the mighty Starmore! I am disgustingly pleased with myself. Knitting in the Old Way tells me exactly how to make a saddle shouldered sweater, so armed with that and a cone of yarn(in linden green), I'll be doing my damndest to recreate the Irish Moss sweater on my own.

Irish Mock, here I come!

*That teeny, small chunk of the whole shamed me, as well. Of course I was completely complicating things for myself. The whole thing is just TWO STITCH CABLES!

Edit: I suppose it's only fair to say that I've only HALF beaten the Starmore. She has this extra purl stitch that I can't seem to place without losing symetry in the pattern. Me? I threw it away. It just means that my ribbing will be a little different than hers on the bottom to accomodate. No biggy.

Books and knit geekery

2005-12-30T03:29:00.000-06:00

My family knows me too well. Amongst some rather choice knitting related items (none of which are pictured because they've been ordered, and I don't have them yet) I was given several gift cards to Barnes and Nobles. Aside from one book for pleasure I picked up three new books and a lovely hardcover Sketch book to use as a physical knitting journal/pattern book.

[The knitting answer book was actually a present from my brother. A stitch dictionary (not pictured) is the third book I bought, and as it's basic as hell, I don't feel it needs a review. I love it lots though.]

Because I know I love a good book review, I decided to go ahead and give you my thoughts on these. Especially since I don't have a picture of the two hats that I made and gave away.

The knitting Answer Book Margaret Radcliffe

I surprisingly like this book a lot. It's basically like the knitters book of finishing techniques mated with vogue knitting and a knitting help forum and gave birth to this. You won't find patterns, but you will find several ways to cast on and off, knit, purl, knit in the round, do color work, size your patterns and more. Scattered throughout the chapters (all neatly broken up) are questions that many new knitters would come across in their knitting. The question is then answered in a succinct and detailed manner. This is definitely something that all new knitters should be given, or encouraged to buy.

the Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook Lynne Vogel

I think I may have to read through this book a few times to get to know it better. It's an introduction to dyeing, spinning, and sock knitting all in one. There's a handful of information, but nothing too detailed. In fact, you are frequently told to seek better information from other sources in more than one spot in the book. The primary focus is on socks (especially sock toes). Though I wish they would have given more heel options, this book should please any sock enthusiast that has a small desire to dye their own sock yarn, though it definitely isn't a must have (I may find myself returning it for another book).

Knitting in the Old WayPriscilla Gibson-Roberts

Now I really do think every knitter should own this book. While Mrs Gibson-Roberts certainly doesn't hold your hand, she definitely tells you how to design your sweater without much pain involved. A good majority of the sweaters she describes are made using the simple percentage system, and nearly all of them are knitted in the round (no seaming!).

In addition to the useful construction notes on each sweater type, she gives a brief history behind each garment as well as the how and why of its existence. While some may not agree, I definitely recommend this book to anyone looking to branch out and start making their own sweaters and designs.

Merry feasting and orgying!

2005-12-24T14:11:00.000-06:00

Happy Saturnalia, everyone! Drive careful, drink plenty of wine to keep the stress low, and drug your one crabby relative early into the night to avoid any unpleasantries!

T'was the Night

2005-12-20T00:35:00.000-06:00

Things are all up in the air at the moment. In lieu of real blog content I give you the following. Enjoy, and have a happy Chrismakwanaramakah!

T'was the night before Knitmas, and all through my flat
There were 6 works in progress, 5 scarves and a hat.
The stockings were'nt knitted (I bought them instead)
Because I couldn't find Red Heart in the right colour red.

The needles were crammed under cushions and beds
while sweet thoughts of cashmere danced through my head
With Noro on size eights and some wine (just for sipping)
I'd just settled down to finish my knitting.

When out on the lawn I heard such a clatter,
I woke my SO to see what was the matter!
He mumbled and grumbled and rose to the task,
He looked out the window, "What is it?", I asked.

He stared out the window, looked at me and he said,
"It must be for you", and he went back to bed!
Out on the lawn there lay an aluminum sled
Led by 8 reindeer with knit caps on their heads!

With a cute little driver, and cardigan so great,
I knew in a moment it must be St Bates!
I ran to the fireplace with great anticipation
But got a knock at the door and a polite, "Please let me in."

When I opened the door, I shouted with glee!
For the bag that she held was full of presents for me!
Here's Rowan and Jaeger, then alpacaca and bamboo,
Here's silk and some shetland, and some wool from peru!

She filled up my arms from her great bulging sack
and continued to fill them 'til I fell on my back.
Then with a wave of her hand, and a flick of her wrist,
She finished my projects, taking them off my list.

So filled with joy (and still on the floor)
I just barely heard her go out the door.
Up from the sky, far from my sight, there came:
"A Merry Knitmas to all, and to all a good night!"

Charis is a word I use to spinnn-innnn-innnnn

2005-12-12T10:31:00.000-06:00

Promises are like glass spun of sugar: easily broken, and easy to eat and forget about. So forget about what I said I was going to do on Sunday, and instead take a gander at this

That's about eleventy hundred (no, I really don't know how many) yards of slightly thick and thin fingering weight singles that I spent Sunday spinning up on my very lovely Charis spindle. The wool that i used was given to me in a trade by the ever beautiful and talented Tipper. Though it's hard to tell in the skein, this will knit up as an ombre, transitioning every damn color you can think of but yellow. I haven't quite decided yet if I want to knit it up as is, or if I want to navajo ply it. Until my brain makes a valid decision it'll be going into my verah special yarns box to await its fate.

For those of you that are curious about the spindle and how it behaves; In a word, fabulously. It spins long and fast with very little provocation. You don't need to thigh roll it to get it going fast, a simple finger flick is more than sufficient. The balance is fab, even when the shaft is has an overflowing cop on it. I'd easily recommend a charis spindle to anyone. Even if you've never spun before, I'd say to get one of these before you bother with one of those toy wheel and dowel spindles that you can find everywhere else.

Now back to my previously scheduled sock knitting.

_{Still no recipe. Don't wanna. For those of you that want Filthy Dirty Balls, I will be including a blurb with the recipe on tempering chocolate so you can have 'em that way too. You know, when I actually get it posted.}

I've got dirty balls!

2005-12-10T18:48:00.000-06:00

Knitting generally doesn't happen on Saturdays in the House of Briar. Generally, that ever insidious sin, Sloth, rules over the household, and sometimes Gluttony comes to play as well.

Today is a day for both. And maybe some shopping. Greed. I like a well balanced diet of all of the sins, thank you very much. Have I mentioned I'm still in my pyjamas?

That, my friends, is a Dirty Snowball. Though I'm sure you'd beg to differ, it's quite possibly one of the most fantastic things you will ever put in your mouth (unless you're angling for a new diamond, but that's neither here nor there). They were inspired by [Read: "They're a complete and total rip-off of"] the lovely Trinidads made by the now defunct Fannie May (or Tripolis by Fannie Farmer, for you WI residents). It's basically a simple candy coating (or white chocolate if you can find it) with toasted coconut in it, wrapped around a delicious glob of semi-sweet ganache (the crap they put in the middle of chocolate truffles). I decided at 7am this morning that it was time to use the ganache that I made three days ago at 4am and make these damn things (they're expected this time of year).

And here is where I was going to give you the recipe. Syeah, I'm totally generous like that. The thing is, I've typed it out four f@#%ing times now, and for some reason the recipe gets eaten but what I've written above stays in place. I don't know what's eating it, or why. Apparently noone is to know the magic of Dirty Snowballs but me and mine. Don't worry. I'll get the damned recipe posted eventually, it's just not happening now. You know, with the post where it would be on topic. And make sense. I just can't type it out again. Typing it out again will make me hate them, and nothing as good as them deserves to be hated.

Tomorrow? Turning the heel on Son of Sock. Maybe a recipe. I'm guessing more Sloth. Mmmm.

Son of Sock

2005-12-09T01:18:00.000-06:00

Let's just jump to the picture.

I woke up ~~late this afternoon~~ early this morning to an email from my mom:

Bobby,

PLEASE make me my other sock! My one sock is beautiful, but I want the other! MAKE ME ANOTHER!

Love,

Mom

How on earth could I ignore that (or the guilt I've been receiving from fellow knitters)? So son of sock was cast on and I'm now 4 inches into it. I really ought to be further but things like shiney objects, playing nintendo, cooking dinner, and more shiney objects interfered. Surely you understand. If I'm not done with it by next tuesday at the latest (I realise my own lack of attention span) you all have the right to verbally chastise me into a quibbering mass of goo.

In case you were wondering, no, the surprise of the sock(s) wasn't ruined by my mom reading my blog. It was ruined for her when she stopped in unannounced while I was working on it. It was red. Red is her favorite colour. It was a sock. She gets a pair of red socks every year from my dad for xmas (something between them, don't ask). There was NO convincing her that the sock was for anyone but her. Besides, she's a mom. Naturally she knows when her child is lying to her. And I suck at lying about presents. I just do.

I've also started what might quite possibly be the last of the heliish garter stitch novelty scarves. I hope. I was thinking about just going to Wal*Mart, buying some craptastic novelty scarves from there, ripping off the tags and pretending that I made them, but that would be dishonest, and I would feel bad for taking credit for something that ~~40 children in a sweat shop somewhere in South America or the Middle East~~ a blameless scarf machine made. Poor machine. I bet it wishes it were a calculator instead, now.

Thank you to everyone that found his/her way here one way or another and left comments. Thank you for the congrats and compliments as well. I'm trying to email each one of you back a reply, and until I do I hope this tides you over. [Yeah, you should all have replies by now, but we've discussed my attention span. Give me some slack! And a cookie!]

Speaking of comments, how do the majority of you handle yours? Do you email the people back, do you answer them in the comments field, or do you give them a heads up in your next entry? I've seen it done all three ways and I can't decide which way works best.

Second sock? Maybe.

2005-11-29T23:41:00.000-06:00

I'm totally making a post about a sock. One sock. I don't think I've shown any socks since my very first two, but this sock is different. It's special. It's for my mom. A sock for a mom makes the sock extra special and extra noteworthy. I know you totally agree. And if you don't agree, you should just smile and nod.

Anyway, here's the sock. Which is not spectacular, but is soft and cozy. I discussed why there isn't spectacular patterning before. I think. I really don't remember because I'm slightly crazy. Huh? Right. The sock.

^{What lint on the towel? What strand that still needs to be sewn in? Shut. Up.}

Now let's talk about the second sock. I don't want to make it. Seriously, I don't. It's not that the yarn isn't lovely, or that my dear mum isn't lovely, or that I've been stung repeatedly in my left hand preventing me from knitting it, I just don't wanna. This is baffling since I usually don't suffer from Second Sock Syndome (or SSS, or S3 or S³), because I'm ALWAYS looking for something new to knit, and a second sock is a quick and obvious fix. I'm certainly not succumbing to the ~~siren call~~ violent warbling of the garter novelty scarves, or the cotton ~~nightmare~~ lace, so I'm thinking that this is really a case of HDK in disguise (holiday-deadline-knittingitis).

Because these have to be done before a certain date, I'm losing interest in them. I just know that the gremlins living my head are going to try and make me put it off until the very, very last minute and stay up ALL night dec 23^rd, only to have half a heel turned when I wake up delirious and with 20 minutes to get ready before dinner with my family on the 24^th, thus not having a completed present for my mom, who will then feel sad, and then Santa will die and christmas will be ruined across the globe for all.

I guess I better cast on for that second sock now, huh?

In constant pain

2005-11-29T13:07:00.000-06:00

Why no update in forever again? What have I been doing, what have I been knitting? Honestly, you don't want to know. Oh wait, if you're reading this, I suppose you DO want to know.

*sigh*

I've been knitting garter stitch scarves out of very soft but horrifically furry and nubby novelty yarns for Giftmas presents. Don't even start. I don't want your eyeballs bursting into flames more than once, so I'll be kind and include a group shot of said horrid novelty scarves when they are done. I know I should try some ingenuity and knit luscious cables and lace, but I know too well (as do you) that a horrid novelty scarf will receive more awe and appreciation than anything that is intricately patterned with a nice, normal wool yarn. And lets face it, when you spent what feels like 40 zillion years knitting what is basically an endless swatch, you want some oooing and ahhing.

*sigh*

Oh, and a handful of the recipients are allergic to wool. And they have no taste. What's that you say? I'm already knitting something in cotton for my grandma, so why don't I just use some cotton yarn instead of horrid novelty? Please to be banging your head on the monitor and rereading the paragragh above the last sigh. And? I have decided that I hate cotton. A lot. Splitty, unstretching nightmare. That's cotton in a nutshell.

After the baby + knitting = yarn ramen debacle, I've cast on for something new and lacier with the horrid cotton stork, or whatever the hell it's called. Since the lace pattern is based on a Shetland lace motif, it almost cans my need for an aran pattern, but not really. I'll leave you with a picture of the lace in progress, and my mom's sock nearly completed.

kindly ignore the cookie crumbs. Yes. I eat cookies when I knit. Shut up.

EDIT:That damned sock still isnt finished. This post should have gone up a few days ago, but I couldnt get my FTP thingy to do what it was supposed to, so I couldnt load these damn pictures. I'll spare you details, only saying that picking up 52 stitches in the round just isnt any fun. Ever.

I've nothin' to show for nothin'

2005-11-10T07:47:00.000-06:00

About two days ago I was going to show you the following picture:

^{kindly notice errors circled in green}

and then I was going to whine and cry, and make threats about ripping it out, etc, etc, etc. The day after I took that photo, Mark had his sister's 2 year old son over. Now, if I had known that a baby was going to be in my house, all of my knitting would have been safely stashed away so that little curious hands couldn't get at it. The kercheif was frogged for me. Yay? I don't know. Now I have NO interest in the damn thing at all and it was due two weeks ago (told you I woudln't finish it in time). I'm thinking about reworking the pattern in a top-down fashion simply because my mind is stupid and thinks that things go faster that way.

To make it look like I've done something, and to show you that knitting hates me this month, I submit the following:

1. I don't want to talk about it. Somewhat similar story as #2, but not really. Silk/cashmere is soft as hell though. I'm not too mad at it, it just needs to tell me what it wants to be so I quit having disasterous results when I knit with it.

2. La Gran Mohair that was being a shawl at some point. Its shawl-ness petered out on me when I put it down for a couple of weeks and went to pick it back up only to realise that I had no clue where I left off. Try as i might, there was no continuing on it. Yes, I painfully frogged it all down to balls again. (I hate mohair, btw.)

3. This is my TV knitting. Sexy, mindless stockingette in the round. The yarn is Jaeger Luxury Tweed. It will (before I die) be a scarf for me.

4. What the daisy lace kerchief looks like now. 'nough said.

5. The beginning of a plain red sock for my mom. Plain isn't the way I wanted to go, but the 4 patterns that I tried previously just didn't pan out. Plain it is. Yarn is Louet Gems Pearl. So far, I highly recommend it. It's damnably soft and silky.

Lurking about the house somewhere are two scarves and a hat that I made with the Kuryeon 88 colorway. When I find them, I may post pictures. Though most of you know what a basic hat and scarf look like, so I might not.

Good heavens this post is clipped and curt, but... eh. That's all I have folks (and I'm going on 24 hours of no sleep...with a bottle of sleeping pills sitting 3 feet away that I keep forgetting that I have. Shut up.)

Another @%&!ing kerchief

2005-10-21T14:20:00.000-05:00

Apparently I'm going to my grandma's this weekend. Apparently this Sunday is her birthday. Apparently I suck at remembering anyone's birthday. With two days to spare, I have cast on for this:

^{This is what happens when you try to take a picture of horrible baby blue yarn, but all of the pics come out REALLY blurry if you don't use a flash while at the same time being terribly blinding in their brightness, and then you try again by placing your finger over the flash. Yeah. that's my blood making that red wash. Eerie, no?}

using this pattern(warning! pdf) and Dale Stork in horrible baby blue (her favorite color) on horrible size 3 needles. Will I make it in time? No, probably not.

pas des images aujord'hui

2005-10-09T11:02:00.000-05:00

That's right, no pictures. There would be pictures (of the baby tank that I started a zillion years ago, no less) but my cord to make pictures leap from my camera to my computer is sadly missing. The tank? She is /finally/ almost finished. As much as we love Artyarns Supermerino here at Chez Briar, we do not love the tank, no we do not. Since my brain died in the middle of binding off the collar the first time, I had to rip it out since it was flaring and being quite ugly (I've mentioned this sad tale, yes?). Anyway, this meant the magical dropping of 24 stitches front and back and much cussing on my part. Also the reknitting of the whole damned tank after frogging. The collar, she is muchly beautiful now. I love her, you love her, we ALL love her!

But the tank still isn't finished. I don't believe that this item will be adorning my little nephew anytime soon (if ever!).

Enough of the tank. I've caught the aran bug. I desire something aran to knit, like, really badly. REALLY badly. I've decided that it simply must be knit out of Bartlett yarns as well. Since my desire is to knit a cardigan-ish, jacket-ish aran thing this is not a problem. There will be horseshoe cables, and v-twist cables, and a lattice neck-line, and cables that I can't think of to fill in spaces where I need more cables. Something tells me that a trip to b&n or my library is in order for a new stitch book. If any of you lovelies have a book that you think I should def look at for inspiration, please let me know!!

ZOMG I've nothing

2005-10-01T22:43:00.000-05:00

I've still nothing, BUT I will give you some gratuitous FO shots. Okay just two. Of one FO. If it's not one thing it's another around here, and the latest has been two (yes two!!) flus in a row. TWO people. Who the hell gets that? Any who, here's some pics of the Mantle-Shawl that I mentioned in--damn-- july. Yeah. These are well over due.

Pattern: (pending) Random top down thing I winged using simple new shell.
yarn: left over cherry tree hill super sock potluck
notes: If i ever do this again, I will NOT make the final row before bind-off all yo's. Totally destroyed what I was going for. meh.

meh

2005-08-30T00:48:00.000-05:00

Don't even pretend like you're expecting any actual content (you know there isn't any). Looking around the blogs that I read regularly, both knitting and non, it would seem that I'm not the only one taking a bizarre hiatus from posting. As soon as I have everything settled down on my end, regular posting shall begin. And pictures. Pictures will happen too. For now, I need to post this for future reference for myself:
Jaeger Luxury Tweed: 5.5 stpi sz 6 needles.

Shhh! This is a stealth post!

2005-08-04T09:48:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I'm still alive. I'm totally sneaking this post in just minutes before work. Where have I been, what have I been doing? It's all so terribly exciting that you'll have to wait to find out! Okay, no not really. I've just been caught up in life and been sort of apathetic towards both of my blogs. I believe it's this summer. All of my Caring has been absolutely melted out of me!

I'll try and post pics this afternoon when I get home. There's been knitting, and unknitting, and frogging, and the dropping of a whole neck's worth of stitches and other excitment over here at Chez Briar.

Okay, I gotta run. More later. I really promise this time. And shut up about my blog still not being completely fixed. More on that later too!!

:-*

MOVING!!!

2005-07-10T14:16:00.000-05:00

I'm almost completely done moving. I just have to smack my scripts around a bit.

new site url is www.briarfiber.com/blog

new RSS feed is briarfiber.com/blog/feed/atom.xml.

Please update your stuff and bare with me with while i figure all of this crap out.

NOTE: I have no experience in web design, html, css or any of the other crap. This is ALL on the fly baby!

God I hope this works!

Moved!

2005-07-10T13:37:00.000-05:00

I'm almost completely done moving. I just have to smack my scripts around a bit.

new site url is www.briarfiber.com/blog

new RSS feed is briarfiber.com/blog/feed/atom.xml.

So damned contentless

2005-07-07T05:13:00.000-05:00

There really hasnt been much content here lately, has there? I promise, there will be more soon. I have been knitting, though for the past few days I've been giving it a rest as carpal tunnel seems to be setting in (yay unfashionable wrist braces!)

I'm still knitting on the sock for me on the sz 1's (its like my "I'm sick of knitting this other thing" project.) I've ripped the heel turn on my brothers sock and sort of put it to the side until i dont want to kill it anymore, and I'm knitting a shawl (with the copious left overs from my grandma's scarf) and I cant decide if I want to just post the pattern here, or if I should submit it somewhere. It's deliciously easy, and its soaring along like you wouldn't believe (God bless top-down shawls!). The best part? It won't need an edging since the stitch pattern is creating one all by itself! What say you? Should I submit it, or post it here as a nice something to have as part of my "Knitting Portfolio" for when I want to sumbit other things? I'll let you decide its fate since I can't make up my own mind.

I've started another razor shell scarf, this time in some random classic elite mohair stuff that I nabbed on sale. I am not loving mohair. I had to keep putting it down every 5 minutes because knitting with it makes my hands sweat tremendously! What the hell is up with that?

In un-knitting news, I totally caved and bought me a website, briarfiber.com . I'm still ironing out the css and html, but I will be shortly moving there. I'll let ya know when that time comes. I've decided against Movable Type since my ancient Sumerian is rather rusty, and I cant figure out the instructions (they do realise that people who are not programmers want to use it too, right?). I'm going with WordPress instead (much more Me friendly).

Blogger hates me

2005-07-04T04:43:00.000-05:00

Okay, this is the 4th time that I've had to use a new f---ing template because blogger decided that it didn't like the way the template was behaving and it needed to be mangled. PLEASE tell me that it now looks readable. I swear, as soon as I find affordable hosting that lets me pay month to month (i just dont have $70 or dollars to shell at once for a whole year) I'm switching to the wonder that is movabletype.

Have any host recommendations? Theyd be greatly apprec. Also, thank for the feedback as to my previously mangled blog.

I h8 u blogger.

Wtf?

2005-07-02T00:09:00.000-05:00

Apparently my blog feels that it needs to look extremely ugly and bump the contents of my posts below the side bar. PLEASE tell me that this is just happening on MY computer so that I don't have to change templates again. I suppose I could make an attemp at writing my own template, but I need to learn way way way more CSS for that to ever happen. anyways, yeah, tell me what you see please.

Thanx.

Dearest Knitting,

2005-06-30T00:43:00.000-05:00

We dearly need to talk. Remember how you used to surprise me with new motifs, lace patterns, and other knitting esotera at every turn? Remember how you used to convince me to buy that skein of overpriced merino in a color that wouldnt do for anyone that I knew that was alive or even dead? Who told you it would be okay to introduce me to Socks? Who? Did you know that my brief affair with socks would turn into something more? Were you expecting the toe-up nightmare to turn me off fthem forever? You knew that I secretly think that plain unadorned stockinette is the most lovely thing ever, didn't you? DIDN'T YOU?!

Well my dear, whatever your intentions were, I'm terribly hooked on socks. Who needs a sweater made of luxury material when you can afforadably spoil your feet (and unless you're breas feeding or something, your feet are doing a hell of a lot more than your torso, so they deserve a little something extra). Right now I have 2 pairs on the needles. One set for my brother on sz 2's, and another set for me on sz 1's (oh my, TEENY stockinette! *wet*).

Sadly, my socks do not travel, and even if they were inclined to do so I would not be able to take pictures of them as it would seem a cheap immitation of the Harlot's own merry troup of traveling socks. IT would be like those Elvis impersonators in Vegas, and I'm sorry, but impersonation is just teh yuck (the "dear john-esque" letters to whatever have been around forever, so this is NOT impersonation)! When the sockies are finished, then they shall make their debut on my blog. They just arent of age yet.

Any way, Knitting, I'm clearly rambling. I just wanted to let you know what you've done.

Sincerely,

Bobby

Provisional Cast On PSA

2005-06-18T16:21:00.000-05:00

This is hardly a post, it's more of a PSA for anyone doing a search for the provisional cast on after they've done it and discovered that they are now missing a stitch. I wouldn't bother, but I've yet to come across this anywhere online, nor in any book. Here it is:

If you do the provisional cast on, crochet, knit, whatever, you will be missing a stitch when you rip it off to knit again. Don't worry, it's normal. Just pick up a stitch at the end somewhere and no one will be the wiser.

Feel free to send me presents for saving your sanity.

Sock II

2005-06-17T13:10:00.000-05:00

Knitting is sexy! What's sexier than having a knitted garment that you can wear in less than two days? I present to you, the other sock:

I am very much in love with this sock. It's snug, it's comfy, and it only took the other half of my ball of regia and the tiniest bit from from my other ball. A pair of socks from basically one ball of yarn? That, my friends, is sexy as hell. The only thing that does NOT make me happy about this sock is the grafted toe. I have no problems with grafting. I dont hate it, I don't dread it, I don't fear it. I just don't like the ugly little peaky, dog ear corners it made happen. I'm assuming they'll disappear after a few washes (knitting is magic like that, I know), but how do I make a nicer, more clean lookinig toe? Suggestions from you fabulous knitting godesses would be much appreciated.

In unsock related news, I recieved The Knitter's Book of Finishing Techniques in the mail, and after reading through it, I have to say, I'm really not impressed. I'm especially not impressed because it's priced at $25 (despite how much of a discount you can get it for online). In the fashion of the book, I shall now give you the pros, and cons, of this book.

Pros

This book is teeny. It will easily fit in your project bag, purse, backpack, whatever, and not be cumbersome.

It has 13 pages on seaming, and it details doing set in sleeves really well.

If you're new to knitting, and you can't quite rememeber basic increases and decreases, this book has it all for you with nice little pictures.

Cons

The cost is more than this book is worth. I'm fairly certain that you are paying for the special sprial binding with hard cover

For a bunch of techniques, you are referred to another page in the book, making it slightly less friendly to use

Many of the cast ons and bind offs are not unique in any way. Unless your main knitting tome is extremely basic (like S&B) none of them will be very helpful, or new to you

It doesn't detail finishing nearly as well as you think a book with the name Knitter's Book of Finishing Techniques would.

All in all, this is a nice little take along book for those "How do I..." moments in your knitting, but really not worth it. And really, for those moments, you'd more than likely be happier with the Vogue Knitting Quick Reference.

Sock!!

2005-06-13T21:56:00.000-05:00

about that lovely lace scarf... Let's just say that I have learned a VERY valuable lesson about why I should use a life line, no matter how simple the pattern, and that if you accidently drop a double decrease and dont realise it for about 3 inches that you will have a VERY big and ugly hole suddenly appear. Sooo, the lace scarf has been transformed to silk/cashmere ramen. I did make an attempt to pick up stitches and salvage the thing, but the knitting gods were punishing me for not using a life line. So yeah. How about a sock that I started when my grampa was in the hospital?

There you see some of my sexy, hairy leg, and the sock. This sock was knit using Wendy's Generic Toe up sock pattern. The yarn is the lovely Regia that my secret pal sent me. I hate this sock. The yarn, she is fabulous, the pattern, she sucks ass (well, the pattern itself is well written). Short rows are NOT comfortable. I'll be doing the other sock the top-down fashion with flaps and gussets and all that jazz. Without even knowing how it'll feel, I'm already rooting for the heel flap.

This sock would have been longer, but since I dropped 32 stitches at once, and then had to rip back the heel, and blah blah blah, I got tired of it and just made it an ankle sock. You love the ankle sock. you want to BE the ankle sock. Be one with the ankle sock. The ankle sock is a person-with-no-attention-span's best friend.

Now, anyone want to place bets as to when the second sock will be emerging?

Reversible Cable Scarf

2005-06-10T15:30:00.000-05:00

Before I even give the pattern, I believe that it needs to be said that reversible cables can be made from any cable pattern so long as you use a stitch pattern that is reversible. So garter, seed stitch, and ribbing pretty much cover it.

Pattern

Yarn: 2 skeins Cascade 220 (any worsted will do)
Needles: 4.5 mm (US7)
Notions: Cable needle, or dpn, for holding stitches for cables.
Finished size: Approx 5' x 6" after blocking
Pattern Notes: C8B = with yarn in back, slip 4 sts to cable needle/dpn purlwise and hold to back of work. K in pattern over next 4 sts, then K in pattern over four sts on cable needle.

CO 52 sts

Row 1: K2, *K1, P1 (4 times), K2* repeat from * ending K2
Rows 2-6: Repeat Row 1.
Row 7: K2, *C8B, K2*, repeat from * ending K2

Repeat rows 1-7 for desired length, ending row six. Bind off in pattern

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to email me. Briar[dot]fibre @ gmail[dot]com

Finally!!!

2005-06-05T23:35:00.000-05:00

It's happened. We all knew it would some day, but it's finally happened! I've finished Mark's damned reversible cabled scarf! Now he only has to wait 5 months to wear it. Poor guy.

Here's the tree right outside our front door modeling the scarf. The people that live above us, and across from us, were staring at me out of their windows the whole time. They were acting as though they'd never seen a guy tie a scarf around a tree branch and take pictures of it before. Sheesh.

I'm not going to bother posting the specs since I'll be posting the pattern for it anyways. I know it's not a hard thing to figure out, but hell, it might help someone.

Not to say never, but this will more than likely be the last cabled scarf I make like this one. Ever. I know some people find cables a joy to knit, but I am not one of those people. Me? I'm lazy and impatient. I want super-ultra gratification. I don't mean the kind of gratification where you have a finished item in thirteen seconds or less, I mean the kind where you see the pattern unfold, and are delighted by it, in thirteen seconds or less. Lace, gives me that.

Or in the case of this scarf, about 3 hours until I'm gratified. It's cashmere/silk laceweight on 3.5mm needles. I know you can't see it in the picture really, but it's a pretty, heathery, steely grey colour. This will be going to my grandma Gorky, which is my mom's mom. Unlike my other grandma, I know that my grandma Gorky will appreciate this scarf. Hell, I could just knot together a buch of floss and she'd treat it like it were gold (at least the floss would build up faster).

Sadly, I'm not the only one knitting this scarf. It seems to have started here, and spread to here, and here. Suddenly, I had the itch too! Normally, I am immune to the contagions of a simple, yet beautiful, knitting pattern that others are knitting, and my immunity tried valiantly to hold. I would not contract the disease! I would not conform. Then, as I was going through a pattern book I saw a pattern for the same scarf under the Shetland Lace section. Instead of razor shell, they called it New shell! So, even though it was the same exact pattern, the different name made it okay for me to knit it. (just like it takes about 5 different viruses to make the average cold, and no two people are carrying the same five, so it's okay.) Am I insane? Yes.

It's been too damned long

2005-06-02T00:23:00.000-05:00

It's been a couple of weeks, I know. For whatever reason, the desire to blog has not really been with me. I had plenty to say, I was just feeling too apathetic to say it. Call it a funk, if you will. I have not, however, been idle! Remember when I said I was going to make the baby a blanket, but then decided to make it a cutesy teddy bear based on my own design instead?

Artyarns Tank

I guess I sort of lied. To all of us (including me). Don't look at me that way. Just don't! I never said I wasn't fickle! Not once, ever! What you are looking at is the finished back, and partially finished front of a baby tank in art yarns merino (pattern fudged to accept the artyarns by yours truly). You can see what it would have looked like if I had done it in green, in the yarn that I was supposed to use, and then given it to some other baby, if you will kindly click here. I like mine better. Heh.

Of course, being the fickle(and easily bored) person that I am, I could NEVER just finish something. God no. I had make something ELSE. So I referred to that magical book that the link brings you to above, and made THIS!

Debbie Blech Baby Shoe

Debbie Bliss says its a shoe. Okay. It may be a shoe one day. And with such fabulous instructions as "Sew up heel seam. Let in ease for toe." It may nearly be a shoe in the next millenium or so! [By the way, this book has NO silhouettes. That's all fine and dandy for the things that easily look what what they're supposed to, but I would have liked something to go by when that magical atrocity of geometry was the end result.] For those that are wondering, no, it is not in the yarn called for. Again. It's Jo Sharp DK in Owl, I believe. I lost the ball bands ages ago. This was actually the very first yarn I ever bought!

Speaking of yarn, a couple of weeks back, or so, the ever lovely Tipper sent me a lovely unbirthday package!

Goodies

That's Koigu, Socka, the magical Susan Bates Sock Needle Set that doesnt live in my city, and a Filati pattern book full of lots of ~~hot models~~ gorgeous patterns! Incidently, she also popped my Koigu cherry. I mean, I've met it in person, but I've never owned it in person! Um, yeah. You know what I mean.

In completely not-knitting related news, yesterday, at 4:09 pm, I became an uncle!

Brian Michael & Me

This is my brand new nephew Brian. Is he not one of the cutest newborns that you've ever seen? Seriously, he's adorable, and most newborns have that gross lizardy, drowned rat look going on. My brother was shocked when I told him that his new boy was beautiful(he thought I was lying to be nice, ha! He should know better by now.). Baby Brian also made his first ever poopy today, but I figured noone would want to see pictures of that mess, so no pictures were taken.

Snippet

2005-05-15T05:44:00.000-05:00

Thank you all that left comments, and for the kind thoughts, concerning my grampa (and the yarn site suggestions). He passed away on friday night, so there was no suffering. All in all, it's a relief that he passed quickly instead of lingering in a pain/drug induced haze.

Onto knitterly things, the most recent issue of knitty has ruined me. No really, it has. This article is to blame. I like nice, tight, neat stitches, so of course I was tightening each one after I knit or purled. That article made me rethink knitting tightly and loosening up a little. So I did. The first few swatches I did looked as though they were knit with fingers, in the dark, while dodging unseen land mines. They were loose and terrible. Finally, I was able to get to uniform, but completely rowed out. EVERY row. The stitches were neat though. This made me rethink my purling method. My beloved Norwegian purl tightens the stitch before it when you make your current stitch, but it was also loosening my stitches considerably with the new tension I was knitting at. Add the fact that I just taught myself to knit English-ly (shut up, it's a word now) and I now purl by throwing continentally. This fixed my problem... for the most part. My stockinette is still not perfect. I want perfection, damn it. Or at least passable "looks good from a galloping horse that stopped for a minute for a breather" perfection.

Reteaching myself to knit stockinette (does anyone do this perfectly btw?) has also made me wonder about gauge in general. I mean, when we are shooting for gauge in a pattern, whose gauge is that anyways? Assuming we all knit differently (and we do) why bother with gauge at all when you can just give concise measurements to follow instead? Then jump with the gauge you have. Am I making sense here? Obviously some things like intarsia, or fair isle, or some lace and cables would look super ugly if the gauge were way off, but I think that the majority of knitters are intellegent people, and that they would be able to fix those problems by switching needles or whatever.

Hopping onto another topic entirely, without proper transition even, I have to ask about fair isle gauge/tension. I have'nt seen it mentioned anywhere, so I figure one of you lovely knitting peoples would know. Does your gauge tighten, and if so, how much? For example, I'm knitting with lopi lite on sz9 needles, and I'm getting a gauge of 24 stitches per 4", when it should be about 15. And I have no puckering. And yes, I do spread my stitches before I knit in the next colour.

So yeah, nothing exciting. I'm teaching myself stockinette...again. Oh! I did receive my last package from my SP! And I know who she is now too! Cam is MIA so you'll have to deal with a list of the loot. You all have fabulous imaginations, so use them.

2 sets of lovely bamboo needles sz3 and sz 10
1 skein of lion brand suede in a lovely heathery greeny sagey colour
1 green barrel full of monkeys (I told the kids to back off)
1 ginormous bar of Cadbury's dark chocolate (no, I won't share!)

By the way, I think she was stalking my yarn purchases. I buy sock yarn, she sends sock yarn, I buy Peruvian Alpaca, she sends me peruvian alpaca, I buy a skein of lion brand suede, she sends me a skein of lion brand suede. She couldn't have known about these yarn purchases any other way since I didn't really blog about them, and if i did it was totally after the fact... Totally stalking me. ;-)

Okay, that is all for now. I have the wake/visitation/ceremony thingy to go to tomorrow and monday. I'm hoping that goes well (my gramma can be...interesting at any given moment).

That's it! Now go away and knit something!

Blech

2005-04-27T15:32:00.000-05:00

Sorry I havent updated (this is assuming that people are falling over themselves to read me). Right after I posted pics of the falling leaves scarf my mom called to tell me that my grandpa wound up in the hospital with brain/lung cancer. Soooo went to see him at the hospital, up in Wausau, to see how things were, and to find out that it was definitely terminal. They've tried to at least get the tumors on the brain down, but to no effect. He was sent home yesterday to "live a quality life until he passes". There was much crying and lots of emotional strain that weekend, and on my part, lots of knitting on a sock to keep myself distracted.

I don't like to bring my personal life into my knitting blog, but I thought that perhaps I owed an explaination.

Oh, and while I was gone, the apartment was thoroughly cleaned, and I'll be damned if I can find my knitting things yet. I'm quite pissed about this. So, while there will be no pics, I can at least tell you what my sp sent me (yes, i can always remember yarny good things). The lovely dear sent me 2 balls of highland alpaca from elann (this stuff is orgasmic), a lovely pair of clover bamboo straight needles (I do love the straights again), a purdy green/blu koosh ball (I'm pretty sure that it disappeared with Mark's kids somewhere while I was gone), and 2 suckers (once again, I'm certain it was Mark's kids that got to them). Thank you SP!!

There we go, that's all I have to say for now. No wait, can anyone suggest a good, relatively inexpensive, superwash wool yarn that I can make a sweater out of? I want to make myself a sweater, but I want it to be relatively easy in upkeep. This sweater will be replacing my very much falling apart favourite sweater that I bought a few years back. Mmmk.

Thanks.

Falling Leaves Finished!!!

2005-04-14T12:05:00.000-05:00

I finished the damn thing at about 5 this morning. Behold it's magical glory. The colors show truest on the sidewalk shot, otherwise I wouldn't have included it since it sucks ass.

Vitals

Pattern: Falling Leaves Shawl
Book: Lavish Lace
Author(s): Carol Noble~Cheryl Potter
Yarn: Cherry Tree Hill Potluck Supersock
Colour: Jewel Tones
Needles: Size 4
Notes: First off, I love the way this knits up. The only thing that would stop me from knitting it again is the sheer boredom after the 3rd repeat row. Also to be noted, the yarn was very vibrant before washing, but during washing a lot of the blues and reds liberally bled into the water leaving it looking kinda ordinary, to me. On the plus side, this yarn REALLY softens up after washing. I mean to the point of making me almost shun silk.

I didn't go the whole 7 row repeats like the pattern suggested, instead stopping at 6 for a nice kerchief.

Blocking

Couch modelling

CM2

Sidewalk

Falling leaves

2005-04-04T19:13:00.000-05:00

OKay, I'm now about half a repeat away, and it looks like I should add another repeat just to be on the safe side. For some reason I am making mistakes left and right now (dropping stitches, forgetting stitches, screwing up my counting, etc.). Is this because I'm almost done with the damned thing? I could have been done about an hour ago if I didnt have to keep ripping back to fix what I screwed up. At this point I'm just randomly adding stitches as I need them. Gah!

All I can say is that if my gramma doesn't love it more than life itself, I am so going to bitch-slap her!

Peeeectures soon I promise.

I got another package from my SP today! I'll take pictures tomorrow when the light is good. Needless to say, I am already using what she sent me just so I can have a break from Falling Leaves.

Needles!

2005-04-03T18:35:00.000-05:00

Sometimes being poor is a good thing, because then you have no choice but to go to Ben Franklin and get the Susan Bates aluminum needles*. With the exception of rosewood (far too expensive) I <3 the Susan Bates needles! Why did noone ever tell me about them? I sort of just assumed that since the boye needles bit the big one, that the Bates needles would too. Oh how wrong I was. They're not terribly slippery and awkward like the Boye needles, and they aren't prone to being too sticky like bamboos. They're totally the last bowl of porridge.; they're just right.

Go on, you knitting snobs, get up, go to your local craft store and get some of these colourful babies. I promise that you will not regret it. Besides, why pay $11, or more, for something you can get for $3?

*_{It should be noted that I am referring to the straight needles. The only circulars I really like are Addis or Clover. The cord is too stiff on less expensive needles for me, amd I hate dealing with a crappy join.}

ETA: Oh, and I've decided poo poo on the whole baby blanket thing. I've decided on a teddy bear pattern that is inspired by the billions that I've seen online with some Artyarns Supermerino in whatever blue clourway my lys has. Then again, with the sudden possessiveness of the girls family, and the girl herself, with the not-born-yet-baby, I'm wondering if I'll even get to see him to give it to him. *Sigh*

On a progress related note, I am about one (god I hope) pattern repeats away from finishing the damned falling leaves scarf for my gramma.

hope your weekends were productive!

2005-03-29T14:24:00.000-06:00

Nothing to really report on my end. I've been reckless spinning some thick 'n thin wool from my stash, and swatching random stitch patterns as they fly into my head. Some work, some don't. I'm sure you all know how that goes.

In other news, I am a frantic search for a baby blanket pattern that won't make me rip my hair out and send it to the sad place that the 2 scarves I haven't touched in a month are sitting. I would pick some random easy thing that could be done in a couple weeks, but this blanket MUST be special since it's going to be for my nephew (please tell me there isn't knitting curse that makes babies unborn themselves if you start knitting them something before they arrive!). I worked out a colourful graduating mitred square deal, but I'm not in love with it as of yet. I also can't decide on what yarn to use. Superwash wool would please me to no end--specifically, spending as much as I would have to spend on the different yarns for something that the munchkin will quickly outgrow has me a bit apprehensive. Of course I could the left overs (assuming there are any) for another project, but the cost is still lingering over my head.

Eh. You and I know that I've already made up my mind to use the superwash anyway, so I suppose this conversation is moot. Oh, fickle, fickle me.

Just some spinning

2005-03-21T00:57:00.000-06:00

I figured some yarn porn was in order, since it's been so damned long. Here we have a lovely silk/merino blend in delicious heathered greens with a light touch of brown. The luscious roving came from the ever fabulous Tipper.

woodsy merino/silk

Would you like some feminism with that?

2005-03-14T03:03:00.000-06:00

I'm noticing a trend among some knit blogs that completely baffles me. Maybe someone out there can clue me in? Okay, here it is:

Knitting and feminism.

Why is knitting a feminist thing to do? Is saying "Well, I'm a feminist!" an excuse for knitting? I mean, are people using feminism as a defense for something that people would call "an old lady's past time"? Is that why it keeps popping up? Because, honestly, I've never heard of anything so silly in my life. Why hide a hobby behind an excuse? Or behind an entire movement, for that matter? If you like doing it, just do it. Nothing more to it. It's not like I don't take crap from my friends because I knit. I just ignore them and move on. I don't jump into a speech about how my great-gramma used to knit socks for the Nazis, and how after every 3rd pair she was allowed to knit a pair for her family, so now I have to knit to show that I support a woman's rights or whatever (yes, my great-gramma really did knit socks for the Nazis). The most they'll get out of me is, "Hey, at least I'm being productive with my time, and I'm doing something that I like. It's relaxing. Want me to teach you how?" Of course I've yet for anyone to accept, but that's besides the point. Please, for the love of God, tell me; How do knitting and feminism go hand in hand?

I've seen some in places how knitting is "embracing a hobby left behind because of the feminist movement", and that makes a little sense. Picking up something that was left behind is nothing new. I'm glad it was picked back up too, because now we have tons of resources, yarns and patterns to draw from. But it still seems like a departure from feminism, rather than a step towards it.

I'm not trying to insult anyone with this, so please, no angry letters, I just really want to understand how knitting and feminism go together. Unless this has something to with the small drops of "fight for your right to knit" crap that comes from the stitch n' bitch books. The author may be a feminist, but that doesn't mean that knitting is.

Gah, I'm just talking in circles and getting no where. Can someone, somewhere, please clue me in?

2005-03-13T14:58:00.000-06:00

It occured to me that people might actually want to see the pineapple, so here it is.

This particular pineapple was done in frog tree alpaca.

Pineapple

Flu Socks: A ripping good time

2005-03-04T17:08:00.000-06:00

Who needs flu shots when you can have flu socks? I was stuck laying about yesterday so I decided to knit something for myself (you have to be selfish when you are sick). So, I printed up Wendy's generic toe up sock pattern grabbed some size 6 dpns that I had sitting there and my skeins of Artyarns Supermerino(color 101), and got to work. I was sailing along failry well while watching some DVDs I had borrowed, when I looked down and saw that I had dropped 4 consecutive stitches. Somehow, the beasts managed to unravel all the way to the toe. Curse them! So I ripped and I have nothing to show for them. I will say this however, Artyarns is WONDERFUL to knit with. It's soft and lush, and the colors display themselves beautifully as it knits up. I highly recommend giving it a try.

Thank you Tanya for reminding me that Knitty is looking for articles from guys that knit too. Since I wont be able to submit a pattern for this issue (yarn doesn't grow on trees, and neither does money) I typed up an article this morning and sent it off. I do hope I did the whole thing properly. I must have read the submissioin guidelines a million times, but that doesn't mean that I didn't miss something (I seem to suck at reading comprehension).

That's about it. I'm going to go curl up on the couch with tea and rest a bit more. The fever is FINALLY breaking.

Mmm. SP yarny wonderfullness

2005-03-01T13:37:00.000-06:00

My SP must have used magical psychic powers when she went shopping. Behold what I was sent!

yarny

2 balls of Regia Norweger-Ringel in colour 5153, 2 balls of Cervinia Forever Jaquard in colour 40 (I love all of these colours btw), one wondrous set of Brittany DPNs (US sz 2), Vogue Knitting SOCKS book, caramel filled Hershey kisses (I already hid them), and a box of very nice tasting Jasmine tea (yep, Jasmine tea is actually my fave). Thank you so much SP!! I couldn't have shopped better for myself. :-*

Today was just a day for yarn. I had a job interview and across the street there just happened to be Follow Your Heart Quilt and Knit. Of course I had to go in! I have to say, it was a whirl wind experience. The owner is so full of energy, bubbly, funny, and nice that she completely disarmed me! I walked out with what you see below.

more!

Trekking XXL in colour 292 (the picture really does do it justice. Thank you sunlight!), and a set of Lantern Moon rosewood dpns (Prolly the most expensive needles I'll ever own). That odd looking wood thing at the top is a nostepinne that my dad made for me out of an old hammer handle and a grinder. I also picked up (not pictured) a pair of crystal palace needles (they were out of the size I wanted so she kindly raped a dpn set for 2 and tossed on needle protectors), and a pattern.

Still moving along on my gramma's scarf thingy. It's getting very boring now (it's not a complex lace pattern) and the purl rows are just a snore. Just a couple more repeats and I'm done.

Once again, thanks SP!!!

EDIT: I'm an idiot. The hershey kisses are dark chocolate, not caramel filled. I was totally fooled by the wrappers. Good god how I LOVE dark chocalte.

*purrs*

Pineapple

2005-02-18T00:42:00.000-06:00

The afore mentioned pineapple pattern can be found here. I turned it into a book mark (you can't really do anything with a pineapple, so I figured it's useful this way). Let me know how it is, and if I need to tweak anything. Hopefully it's easy to understand. Your feedback is much appreciated!

This, that, and the other nothing

2005-02-18T00:17:00.000-06:00

Don't ask about the scarves. Just don't.

Since a lot of people hit my blog searching for the Norwegian Purl, I tossed it over on the side bar so it's easier to find. I don't know why It doesn't just take them to the page where it's at, but whatever. I have archive pages checked so it should -- in theory-- go straight there. Well, there it is on the side-bar now.

I also get lots of hits from people searching for a Dicky(Dickie? Which spelling is correct?) pattern, so I'll be burning one of those out soon too. This means getting my dad to get it out from his ice fishing stuff(and hoping its not covered in gunk) so i can take a picture of it. It's rough, it could use shoulder shaping, BUT it's servicable as a dicky and rather nice looking when you have the flaps all tucked in. Hmmm. Maybe I'll write the shaping into the pattern. I know what would have to be done to get it there. Just a few stitches cast off around the neck... Gah! We'll see.

In other knitting-ish news I've been scribbling down bits and pieces for lace patterns, and ideas for sweater/top patterns too. I envy the patterns that have those nicely drawn schematics. Where the hell do they get them? HOW do they make them? (I mean the clean lined outline of the sweater with all of its pieces and measurements as can be seen on damned near any sweater pattern.) I recall reading a post once on Annie Modesitt's blog, but I'll be damned if I can find it again. If any of you know, please give me a clue, eh? Thanks in advance.

Also pattern related, I want to submit something to the summer issue of knitty. It's going to be an issue to devoted to men! And they're calling for patterns that don't suck! Oh hurrah! Corrugated ribbing is at the front of my mind right now (I've seen enough aran style/cabled sweaters for men for a life-time I think) since I don't believe there are enough patterns with more than one colour in them (for men). Well, there are those patterns with the snowflakes and other hoo-hah, but I mean something that a guy will wear more than once (sorry, the motley that Bill Cosby wears WILLINGLY does not count!). Or perhaps thumb holes. Mmmm.

Okay, one more thing and I'll leave you: I've devised a way to make a knit version of the crochetted pineapple! If you've no clue what I'm talking about, there's a great pattern, and picture, here. God how I Love crochetted pineapples. In case you were wondering why they show up so much in crochet patterns for motifs, they were once considered one of the ultimate symbols of hospitality.

Okay, I'm off.

Lesson learned

2005-02-16T01:17:00.000-06:00

I solemnly swear not to snark on the [Insert season and year here] lineup of IK without actually having the actual magazine in my hands (again). The Wear Everywhere sweater is MUCH cuter in large picture format than in teeny-i-look-like-a-ribbed-sweater format. The Anorexic Pink Cardigan is even cute. The fitted dolman and that thing with the pockets still make that model look breastless and pregnant, though. Still love Galway guy, but...what's with the bundle of onions he's carrying?

I received the afore-mentioned yarn from pippi. Seriously, you need to buy her stuff if you didn't listen to my command before. The picture of that yarn does it NO justice. It's orgasmic, soft, lush, deep, beau-- I think you get the point. Go. Now. Buy.

Okay, that is all.

SP-Spinning news

2005-02-15T04:14:00.000-06:00

While spinning up some yarn this weekend I had one of those wonderful "Oh!.." moments. Drafting suddenly made a helluva lot of sense. The drafting triangle is--finally!--no longer a mystery to me. What I thought was the drafting triangle was, um, well it just wasn't it. This made for much faster spinning, and a much more consistent yarn, which in turn made for a much more happy me. No pictures, sowwy.

I recieved the cutest valentine ever from my SP. She must have known that in my secret heart of hearts I was a huge monkey fan.Thanks SP! It totally brought a smile to my face.

The last thing I needed

2005-02-07T12:48:00.000-06:00

Was MORE yarn! That didn't stop me. Oh hell no! I had to buy this

.

It's from Pippi Kneesocks. Check her stuff out, it's all gourgeous and all hand made.

Imagination post

2005-02-05T19:48:00.000-06:00

I finished my mom's not-fun fur scarf last nite (laziness turned it into a nice key-hole scarf). No pics as I was at her house when I finished it. Just imagine red not-fun fur knit 40 stitches wide out of 3 balls in stockinette. I know, it's so hard to imagine, cuz like, NOONE has EVER posted a pic of a @#@$#$% fur scarf before</sarcasm>. I'll never knit another. Ever. My mom specifically requested red and furry, or else I would have never done it. (Though I loathe it, I am forced to admit that I would consider fun fur, or one of it's pricey cousins, for the cuff of mittens or gloves. It would look okay if done right, n'est-ce pas? Sigh. I'm so wishy washy I know, and yes, this is a LONG parenthetical. Shut. Up. Having said that I will have to say that my (new)stand on novelty frou-frou is that a LITTLE can go a looooooong way.)*

Ready for more imagination? Imagine that I knit a few more inches on the reversible cable scarf. Oooo. Black scarf with cables.

Now let's imagine that the Falling Leaves scarfy thing is still exactly how I left it in the photo. In fact, it's still sitting on the counter in the same spot!

This post was brought to you by your imagination.

*_{Opinion subject to change without notice or reason.}

Pineapple Bookmark

2005-02-03T04:47:00.000-06:00

Good for using up bits of left over yarn. God knows we all have some. A Picture of the finished pineapple can be viewed here.

Any weight yarn (finer yarn will make the pineapple look more like its crochetted counterpart.)
Needles 2 sizes larger than what are called for.
READ the note for line 18!!

CO 4
1. k4
2. k1, m1, k2, m1, k1
3. sl1pwise, k5 (slip first stitch purl-wise on every row following, couting it as the first knit stitch)
4. k3, yo, k3
5. and all odd rows from here on. k3, p#stitches, k3
6. k3, yo, k, yo, k3
8. k3, yo, k3, yo, k3
10. k3, yo, k5, yo, k3
12. k3, yo, k7, yo, k3
14. k3, yo, k9, yo, k3
16. k3, k2tog(x2), sl1k2tog psso, skp(x2), k3
18. k3, k5together*, k3
20. k3, yo, k1, yo, k3
22. k3, yo, sk2p, yo, k3
23. k3, p3, k3

repeat rows 22-23 for desired length. Knit 2 rows, bind off loosely and block.

*slip all stiches purlwise to right needle, then slip stitches onto a crochet hook, pull yarn through and place new stitch on right needle.

sk2p- slip one, knit two together, pass slipped stitch over.

_{© Bobby Ziegler 2005}

Fickled bitch!

2005-02-01T01:55:00.000-06:00

Yes. Yes I am. >Remember this scarfy thingy? Yeah, me too. Well, I got bored with counting, and counting and continuing with it. Sooooo I tore it out and started a scarfy thingy using the Falling Leaves pattern from Lavish Lace. I really like the way it's knitting up. The little diamonds actually look like little leaves! Of course blocking turns them not-so-leafy, so I'm thinking that I won't block too heavily just to keep the leafy look. I like it. This pattern alone is almost worth the exuberant cost of the book.

Now for some knitting porn!

mmm, leafy.

Head on leafy goodness.

ETA:I think I may have found a fabulous pattern(warning: pdf) to use my lace-weight silk/cashmere blend yarn. Wutcha think Tipper?

When bad things turn serial

2005-01-30T15:55:00.000-06:00

A picture is worth a thousand words. This picture is worth a thousand explitives.

_{The pic is a link. Click it.}

Ponchos are bad to begin with, but a Mancho?! That's just sick. Metrosexuality is a disease people, don't let it spread further. DO NOT make this poncho for your man! If you're a man, DO NOT MAKE THIS PONCHO!

On a side note, is there not something about that picture that makes one think of the Urban Sombrero from Seinfeld?

EDIT: Here's another Man-Cho not to knit. I think it might make a kinda cute Woman-Cho, er, pncho, though.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know if the Fiber Arts Bloggers ring is closed?

ETA: The Fiber Arts ring is still open. I was just approved the other day. yay!

SP4 thingy.

2005-01-29T01:44:00.000-06:00

1. Are you a yarn snob (do you prefer high- a nd/natural fibers)? Do you avoid Red Heart and Lion Brand? Or is it all the same to you?

I'm only a yarn snob in the sense that I cannot stand frou-frou. Novelty yarns drive me up the wall. I like the yarn to show off the design, not the yarn. Make sense? Also, boucle needs to die! I do have a huge appreciation for hand dyed/spun yarns.

2. Do you spin? Crochet?

Yep, both. I leared how to crochet before I learned to knit, and I just recently learned to spin-I LOVE IT!!

3. Do you have any allergies? (smoke, pets, fibers, perfume, etc.)

Nope. Unless you plan on sending me something made of ragweed, I think we're okay. ;-)

4. How long have you been knitting?

Sadly, only a year, but I swear it feels like I've been knitting for years.

5. Do you have an Amazon or other online wish list?

Nope.

6. What's your favorite scent? (for candles, bath products etc.)

Lavender, Jasmine, Lemon grass.

7. Do you have a sweet tooth?

I have a bittersweet tooth; Huge lover of the dark chocolates.

8. What other crafts or Do-It-Yourself things do you like to do?

Nothing I can really think of mentioning, unless herbal medicine and other natural remedies count. LOVE herbs.

9. What kind of music do you like? Can your computer/stereo play MP3s? (if your buddy wants to make you a CD)

I'm really not too big on music, but when I do listen I have a preference for songs that arent dripping with angst and suicidal undertones.

10. What's your favorite color? Or--do you have a color family/season/palette you prefer?

GREEN. I LOVE green, though I think that Hunter/Forest are bit over done. I like all of the rest though, even the ones that Martha Stewart somehow managed to suck the life out of.

11. What is your family situation? Do you have any pets?

Just me and my man. No pets. My cat ran away when we moved. :-(

12. What are your life dreams? (really stretching it here, I know)

They change by the day, so I won't bother. ;-)

13. What is/are your favorite yarn/s to knit with?

Soft, soft wool. The brand doesn't matter, it's how it feels that matters.

14. What fibers do you absolutely *not* like?

Not a huge fan of mohair.

15. What is/are your current knitting obsession/s?
16. What is/are your favorite item/s to knit?

Anything on easy to handle teeny needles.

17. What are you knitting right now?

A handful of things, least of all the damned never ending cabled scarf!

18. What do you think about ponchos?

I'd really rather not think about them.

19. Do you prefer straight or circular needles?

Either is fine, but I prefer the short straights over the long ones.

20. Bamboo, aluminum, plastic?

Whatver feels best with whatever yarn I'm using. I'd say I have a greater preference for needles made from natural materials though.

21. Are you a sock knitter?

Yep.

22. How did you learn to knit?

Books, and trial and error.

23. How old is your oldest UFO?

Just a year.

24. What is your favorite animated character or a favorite animal/bird?

Love snow owls, the Fairly Odd Parents, and bats.

Friends don't let friends...

2005-01-24T10:42:00.000-06:00

...Knit drunk. At least they shouldn't. Apparently I can knit like a demon when I've had a few too many. Unfortunately, I knit like a demon with no regard to the pattern at hand. I actually got through 4 turns* in the reversible cabled scarf I'm STILL working on in the amount of time it took for a pizza to bake. Criminey! Sadly, the ribbing was REALLY messed up all over the place, so I had to rip it down. *cries*

Hide your knitting from yourself if you are going to drink. It's not meant to be touched. And whatever you do, don't let your friends knit drunk!

*Of course by turns I mean 4 cable turns, not merely 4 rows, but I'm sure you already knew that. Smary pants.

Norwegian Purl

2005-01-24T09:19:00.000-06:00

Well, here it is. The step by step pictorial on how to do the NP.

1. Start with yarn in back (yarn leading from left hand).

2. Go behind yarn in back with working needle and enter stitch as you normally would for purl stitch.

3. Pull working needle to right to form V (the stitch you have entered, and the yarn in back, form this V).

4. Wrap yarn around right working needle from back to front once. (Or if you prefer, bring working needle up through middle of V from back to front. You're doing the same thing either way.)

5. Pull through stitch on left hand needle from front to back(left to right), and drop old stitch off left hand needle.

6. Admire your new purl!

If you have any questions please don't hesitate to e-mail me. I hope this helps!

Knit picking

2005-01-18T06:04:00.000-06:00

I have a brand new love in my life; the Norwegian purl. Why the hell wasn't this one of the alternate purl methods taught right away in any of the beginner books that I have? Or any of them for that matter.

Needing a break from the never ending cabled scarf, I decided to teach myself how to do the norwegian purl. Once you get past all of the nonsense-filler(well, okay they aren't nonsense, but slopped together the way they are makes them seem to be) words, it's disgustingly easy and much faster than the other way. I'm a 'picker' so the yarn being in my left hand is natural to me anyhow. I know, you don't believe that this stitch can possibly speed things up. I didn't think so either until I timed myself. It cut my knitting time in half! Oh yes peoples, IN HALF!! I was able to add lots more inches to the scarf in no time flat.

My love for this stitch is so strong that I am going to make the man take pictures of me doing it so that I can post a step-by-step how to that's a lot easier to follow than the blurry drawing on the IK site.

That's it. No pics, sorry. I'm off to bed finally. I just had to share my excitement and mad love for the NP. I highly suggest that any picker out there that hasn't tried to try it right now!!

bleh

2005-01-14T17:32:00.000-06:00

Okay, I think I managed to fix the problem. Please let me know is everything isnt showing up neat and tidy like it should. thank you.

my apologies

2005-01-14T00:22:00.000-06:00

I didnt realise that my blog was coming up terribly ugly and messed up on IE. Nor did I realise that it will only come up on Mozilla as it should only if your screen resolution is set to 1024x764 or higher. I'll have it all fixed and unugly by tomorrow night. I'm too tired to do anything about it now.

In the future, if anyone notices unhappy things happening with my blog, please let me know. thank you!

OCKD

2005-01-10T15:50:00.000-06:00

No, it isn't a new way to spell ocky. It's short for my new problem: Obsessive Compulsive Knitting Disorder. You laugh, I can hear you. This disease is nothing to laugh about! It's insidious and works it's way slowly through you, but eventually you're so ensnared by it that not the trendiest pills or therapists could ever shake you of it. Today, it reared it's ugly, ugly little head.

Let me place the setting: Me, sitting happily on my couch, full of brownies and ginger ale, knitting happily away on a little gift bag on 4 dpns. Suddenly it happened. I realised that I wasn't using a stitch marker. In fact, I had NEVER used a stitch marker before when knitting in the round on dpns! Then the OCKD really kicked in. I had to count the stitches on all sides. Were they even? Yes! Thank heavens they were.

Crisis over, right? WRONG! A few moments, and few rounds later OCKD hit again! *quickly counts stitches on all sides* Stitch count was still good. I was okay. I'm going to make it through this, right? RIGHT? Panic overcame me so I quickly ran to the Knitting Community on LJ to see what other knitters do when they work with dpns. I can't be crazy. They soon soothed my ruffled feathers and now I see that I have been subconsciously using the cast on tail as my guide the whole time!

*Breathe out*

Now, back to knitting. Although to be safe, I may just slip a marker between the first 2 stitches. How's your stitch count?

*cue dramatic music*

Just adding some colour

2005-01-09T23:40:00.000-06:00

This just a quick shot of the afore mentioned scarf in progress. I know, it's not very in progress at all, but it's my "Just Relax" knit. I'm still tinking back since I still haven't had a chance to get at it since yesterday.

Spin, spin, spin

2005-01-08T16:31:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I recieved an orgasmic package from Tipper in the mail. Do you not envy me? Do you not envy me simply for being friends with the greatness that IS Tipper? Well?!!

I haven't spun a hair of it. Not one. I'm not allowing myself to. It'll be my reward (along with the other 2 lbs of fibre that I bought) for when I quit smoking. Can you think of better positive reinforcement? I can't. So it's sitting in a happy smoke-free safe area until I kick the habit.

I have been knitting. More on the never ending cabled scarf (I don't know I can't just finish it) and I started a head scarf/babuska thingy for my gramma. No pics yet cuz I missed a damn YO and I'm tinking back so I can fix it. It's only 2 rows down otherwise I'd rip it. It gives me soemthing to do anyhow.

The scarf is a design that I (thought) I had made up on my own. That is until I came across the description for this. Bugger all. I don't know if I would move into copyright infringments or not if I tried to post the pattern for it. Especially since that pattern is for both a scarf and shawl. I'll see how mine comes out and then decided I guess. Or I can always ask people in the Advanced Knitting Community. Anyway, yeah, it's pretty and its made from Cherry Tree Hill Potluck Supersock in Jewel tones. It's going to look fabulous when it's done.

In other news, I'm thinking that one day I might like to be the person that just makes the yarn, while someone close to me makes wondrous patterns to knit with my yarn. I love spinning. It's loverly. There's something special, and understated, in making something that IS FOR making something. When you spin yarn, you spin potential. Does that make sense?

Okay, we've company, so I'm off to entertain like a good little host.

A Picture!

2004-12-29T03:32:00.000-06:00

It's a portion of the reversisible cabled scarf I'm STILL working on. Easy pattern, I'm just much too fickle and new projects are always pullng me away. I MUST finish it within the next couple of weeks. It's a simple enough pattern, so I'll post it when I'm finished with it[the scarf].

Oh yes, you'll hate me

2004-12-28T00:33:00.000-06:00

My dad nearly exploded over his dicky. I never thought anyone could be so happy over a handmade item. Last I heard, he was bragging about it to all his fishing buddies (this amuses me to no end as his buddies are all manly men, and the look on their faces when he tells them that his son knit him the dicky must be priceless). He can't wait to go ice fishing just to try it out. (He also thought that the ribbing in the collar with the garter flaps was some sort of magic!). Now, why will you hate me you ask? Well, because I never took a pic of the damned thing before it was wrapped up and gifted. And why is that? Mark's digi-cam was MIA until x-mas day for whatever reason, so I just wasn't able to. Fortunately, I was given my very own digi-cam for xmas from me mum! Oh yes, much knitting porn will be filling this blog very soon, don't you worry. Now if I could somehow get more peoples over to my blog...

Still no pics, but...

2004-12-21T21:57:00.000-06:00

... I finished my dad's dicky tonite! Finally! the ends are all woven in and now its soaking in cold water so's I can block it. Perhaps a pic when I am done. ;-)

After much procrastination...

2004-12-16T10:28:00.000-06:00

...I finally finished off the front piece of my dad's dicky. AND I learned a lesson about dickie making: Don't cut corners, do the damned shoulder shaping. If I EVER make another one, I'll remmeber to do that. Then again, when I do the back panel it may just weight out evenly. We shall see. Of course I learned all of this from trying it on. MY is it warm! IT almost pulls up to my ears! Cascade 220 = perfect for warmy things. He'd better love it, damn it. (In case you were wondering, no, my dad isn't fashion conscious and he doesn't like the turtle neck under a shirt look. He likes the way a dickey keeps your chest and back warm while providing something less cumbersome than a scarf to pull up over your face while out in the cold.) Pictures will come when I finish off the back piece and weave in all of my ends.

still isn't a xmas present

2004-12-15T17:13:00.000-06:00

It's my first plied yarn! I'm pretty happy with the way she came out, I am.

2004-12-13T11:11:00.000-06:00

Eeep! Christmas is in less than 2 weeks and I still have a shit-ton of stuff to finish! Stupid holidays, sneakinig up on me... Well, the distant relatives will have to wait til after the holidays I suppose. (I think it's more fun to randomly receive a gift in the mail after Christmas anyhow.) Oh, I didnt show the other nightmare scarf I'm still working on in that previous post. It's a reversible cabled scarf. I'll make the man take pictures of it later as I have no clue how to work his digi-cam.

2004-12-11T02:25:00.000-06:00

Stupid blogger.

Gift knitting what?

2004-12-10T09:29:00.000-06:00

What is with making anything as presents? Honestly. Something about a dead-line makes you do EVERYTHING but what you are supposed to be working on! Of course, I've started another damned scarf. I managed to show my Mom how to spin with a drop spindle too (she ooed and aaahed like it were a magic trick and was amazed that she could do it too) and that's about all I've accomplished.

Meh.

Briar Rose and Baby's First

2004-11-27T13:23:00.000-06:00

My loverly spindle arrived yesterday. I've decided to name her Briar Rose--Rose for short. Of course, despite what I promised myself, I decided to try spinning right away! It wasn't as easy as I though it would be, but it was magically relaxing. I have to wonder if everyone's first yarn is quite random and kinda slubby. Ah well, I'll have it figured out soon enough.

This

begot this.

Do tell me it gets smoother and more nice with more practice. Not that I mind slubby thick-n-thin yarn, but I'm really not a novelty yarn type of guy.

And now some gratuidous pics of what I'm currently blundering through.

My dad's dicky.

I was originally planning to do a reversible cable thing with this, but decided that I actually liked the way that the ribbing was coming on all by itself. Well, that and time restraint. All I have left is the miserable front and back panels.

Fun fur scarf from hell. (For mom)
Will someone please tell me what exactly is fun about fun fur? This is my most hated knitted item ever. I decided to do it up in stockinette since I hate the way fun fur feels in garter--it seems softer in stockenette somehow. *Shrug*

And this is the very first thing I ever knit. I finally wove in the ends earlier this week (it's been waiting to be done for almost a year now) and gave it to my brother. Gusto 10 is orgasmically soft, and knits up in a heartbeat.

Curses!

2004-11-23T09:57:00.000-06:00

There is certainly something magic about knitting: It is determined to make all that love it a pauper. Yesterday, on impulse of course, I decided that I needed(note the word need, not want) a drop spindle. Where else to turn but to lovely eBay? Like yarn, needles, and patterns, eBay is one of my horrible little vices. Of course I totally overpaid for the spindle that I won. Why, you ask? It's because I was outbid two minutes before the end of the auction! I certainly couldnt let this horrible person get away with winning my spindle! No sirree! So I outbid them, again, and they bid until the damned price was at my max, and now I am the proud owner of an over-payed-for, but lovely, drop spindle with purdy leaves painted on her. Oh, she's also coming along with a friend... Roving! How delightful!

And then, of course, after the fact of winning the purdy little lady, I research drop spindles. I can make a handful for under a buck. Grrrr! Ah well, I'll use this one as an example for when I try to make my own. That is, IF I adore spinning enough to do so. I must, must, MUST make myself behave and finish at least two of my WIP's before I attempt to spin. Gah!

Into the rabbit hole

2004-11-21T09:13:00.000-06:00

Well, I finally, finally, FINALLY got around to vamping my blog into a right and decent thing to see, as well as making this (of course by this you know that I mean this post, don't you darlings?) first post.

Of course I'll be adding more links and what-not to the little side-bar over there. Just be patient and let me get my head on straight. I do hope that this will be a blogger of blogs; something even I will enjoy reading when I am old and senile. (Though I suppose that if I'm senile I'll be enjoying most of everything anyway.)

I've my horrid Giftmas projects in the making, and a few patterns that uncerimoniously dumped themselves into my lap from my head. I'll be sure to share them later if they are indeed worth sharing at all.

Well poppets, that's all for now. Do hang on, I promise it will only get better as Time goes on.