Superstitch

Hmmm... i guess i really do have enough yarn

Yarn is a pretty addictive thing, my new favorite hobby is to obsessively check knitty's sale spotters board so i can hunt down yarn bargains. This is a very very bad hobby for my pitiful checking account. In an effort to curb my spending i've created a new photo album on the left sidebar to keep a record of all of the yarn that i own. Hopefully by being able to easily see just how much yarn i have, i will remember that i have plenty to work on and i dont need to add to my storgae bins.

I just started photographing my yarn today so that album will continue to grow as I dig all of my yarn out of every nook of the house. I decided that nothing would be excluded until it became a finished object. If you look through the album you'll see a few projects in progress that i haven't talked about yet, and a few that i have.

Here's where i'm at with the Bonsai Tunic. I've just bound off for the arm holes and i'm working my way up to the shoulders, should be completed this evening. Then hopefully i'll be motivated enough to cast on for the front.... i'm just remembering how long it took to get through that lace on the back that i dont want to do it for the front!  I think that i'm going to have enough yarn to finish, but just barely. Ive gone through almost 5 balls of yarn on the back so far and i think once i've cast off the back i will have used a third to a half of ball 6. Since the front is such a deep v i'm hoping that 4.5 balls of yarn will be enough. Wish me luck!

Fresh cut quilt - an update

I've completed one row... out of 8! This quilt is definitely going to take me awhile, but i'm ok with that. Its looking so cool! Its a little hard to keep it looking so random with only 14 different fabrics but i think once its all put together everything will be fine.  As i mentioned in my first post about this quilt, i'm using heather bailey's free quilt pattern from free spirits website and it rocks! The only down side is that i cant strip piece it, every strip has to be cut and sewed individually, the reason its taking so long. I'll probably work on it slowly all summer.

In knitting news i've decided to put glee on hold because i'm pretty sure its too small.... i swatched and chose the right size for my gague but something just isn't working out right. I'm also not sure that i have enough yarn for it so i decided to switch gears and on monday i started to work on the bonsai tunic from spring interweave.

I'm up to the arm holes on the back and hopefully i'll have the back completed by the weekend. I was hoping to get this done fairly quickly but the tunic length and the lace pattern slowed me down a bit. I know the front will go a tiny bit faster so hopefully within a week or two i'll have a fun summer tank! Oh and the yarn is debbie bliss cotton dk in tangerine, i bought a bag of it for 26 bucks from little knits, such an awesome deal!

tug of war

My sewing machine and my kniting needles have been playing tug of war with my mind lately, i just cant seem to decide what i want to be working on at any given moment. I'll start knitting a sock and then have the strong desire to run into the other room and work on my quilt. I'll pick up clementine, get through a few rows and run back to the sewing room to work on another dress. I just cant make up my mind lately.

Luckily today was a do nothing day, i had no plans, nothing to do so i started a knitting project of course! I also started a new sewing project! I just cant stop.

I started Glee from zephyrstlye. I was sitting around after lunch trying to decide what i wanted to work on when i remembered the 7 new skeins of yarn that landed at my door a few days ago. 7 pretty skeins of supermerino bought for half off! So anyways, Glee has begun. I'm about 7 inches into it, i think i'll be able to take the sleeve stitches off in 2 inches or so. I'm really hoping that my 7 skeins will be enough! If i have to i'll try to find a matching white to knit the bottom ribbing and neckline with.

I also have 12 skeins of supermerino in the chocolate covered cherries color finding their way to my door, hopefully tomorrow! I have some kind of simple, perfectly fit, wearable cardigan in mind for those 12. But i wont start on that until at least next fall.

Something else that pulled my attention this weekend was dyeing yarn, i had tried once with koolaid and it went alright, but i recently saw a tutorial on this lovely blog for using easter egg dyes and had to give it a shot, especially when i went to walmart and found out that the egg dyeing kits were only 35 cents! I bought 10 and i might go back for more, they had tons left over. So here are my first attempts at dyeing my own yarn...

very bright and colorful! The first skein is lion brand wool, the natural color. I used pink, yellow and green. It came out very neon but i like it, it will make a nifty scar or hat. The second skein is 2 balls of a joann's brand superwash wool. I used blue, purple and red. The red came out pretty pinky and there are white patches in this skein. I dont think the treated wool was as absorbent as the lion wool, its still fun though! I will probably use both of these for christmas presents this year!

I barely even recognize myself!

Because, thats right, ANOTHER finished project!! Wow, 2 in 2 weeks, go me! Queen of starting things, and now finally i'm finishing some. So may i present to you, my jaywalkers...

 

Now would be where i explain that my feet dont look that long in real life... but i wont lie to you, i have big feet, all the better to balance my 5 foot 10ness.

Pattern: Jaywalkers

Yarn: Artyarns Ultramerino 4, color 150, 1 and a half skeins and Knit Picks Pallete in Bark for the contrast, half a skein

Needles: size 1 Inox dpns

I made the socks short becaue i was trying to be cheap. I added contrasting heel/toe/cuff because i was trying to be cheap. My plans didnt work out. I ended up having to use a second skein of the expensive stuff, and i had enough left over to make the socks almost full size, but i wasn't going to rip out a whole sock to redo it. In the end i've very happy with them, i looove the way the contrast looks, i have plans for many other socks using that same method.

My favorite colors

I've been doing alot of crafty shopping lately. Online and in person. A cool new craft store just opened last week here in austin, austin craft o rama, if you are in the austin area you should definitely check it out! So i bought a few pretty fabrics there, i bought some artyarns supermerino at Sarah's Yarns big sale and i also bought some brown and tan kp essential for the eunny jang, entrelac socks! My grandmother has recently been diagnosed with cancer and she's been complaining of cold feet, so i thought that some entrelac socks might be the cure for that!

Anyways, why do i keep talking about shopping? Well it seems like all i buy lately are things in orange, pink, brown and yellow. The u-neck vest? Fit the color scheme perfectly. The jaywalker socks? Browns, yellows, and blue just to mix it up!

That fabric is an awesome alexander henry print i picked up this weekend at craft o rama. The orange on the left is the finished first half of clementine. I started knitting clementine just for fun, i hadn't knit a complicated lace pattern and thought the pattern was too pretty to pass up. Well the lace pattern has turned out to be very easy and memorizable, a plus in my book! So the whole time i've been working on it, i've been trying to figure out who to give it to, and i think i've decided! Of course i cant say yet because i'm not sure if she reads my blog very often, i dont want her to run across this!

Here's a full shot of the first half of the shawlette, silly word but thats what it is! I just love the way that the nature wool variations show up in the pattern, the yarn could be a little bit softer but my swatch did soften with washing, so i'm hopeful for the finished product!

I really wish i had more knowledge of html and blog templates, i'd really like to creat my own background, and keep a gallery of my finished knits, quilts and sewing projects, but i'm just not sure how to make all that stuff happen. I may try though, wish me luck!

A call for help!

I have fallen in love with Shelly Kang's blanket. I cant seem to link directly to her blanket because all of her webpages simply say, shellykang.com. Anyways, the blanket really appeals to my love of working with tiny needles and fingering weight/sock weight yarn. (see thermal and the deceased venezia) So anyways, i am putting out a call for yarn scraps, anything that is recommended to be knit on size 1-3 needles, it can be any fiber, if its acrylic i prefer a blend so that it can be blocked later, but really anything will work i'm not picky. If there are any sock knitters reading this i would love to have your scraps!!! I will be happy to pay postage if you have a paypal i can send money to. Just leave a comment and i will email you with my info.

Here is what i've started with my scraps, you can see most of my stuff is solids.

i'm following shelly's tutorial she has up on her blog. My squares are measuring almost exactly 2 inches by 2 inches. I know this will take years to collect enough random sock yarn, but i think its just a lot of fun to have this going on.

In other news, i am tempted to join the ripple blanket craze and start one of my own, but maybe i shouldn't have 2 giant blanket projects going on at the same time?

getting there

Slowly but surely i'm making my way through my works in progress. I think finishing my u neck vest so quickly has motivated me! Speaking of the vest...

(i really am terrible at taking pictures, so sorry) But here it is!

Pattern: Fair isle U neck from Vogue Knitting, Fall 2006

yarn: elann's peruvian highland wool, 5 balls of natural, 1 ball each of brown, yellow and orange

needles: clover bamboo 29" circulars, size 4.25 mm/ us 6

modifications: well i left off the sleeves! I shaped the arm holes more so that i could add on ribbed trim.

Overall, I'm very happy with it but there are a couple of things i'll do differently when i make it again. I would lengthen it by 2-3 inches, I would go down a size, or use a smaller needle, i haven't figured it out yet, but the sweater is a little bit big. Not big enough to keep me from wearing it, but big enough that i wish i had made it smaller.

And now for something completely different, anyone remember this sock? It is done! And its match is halfway there!

its grumperina's jaywalker pattern and its great!

just a teaser

I finished my u-neck vest!! I'll be back tomorrow once i have decent pictures, but for now, here's a peek... http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=121658.msg1644330#msg1644330

Weekend knitting

You want to know something dumb? I haven't blogged about this project because i feel like all i ever do is show the beginning of a project... and then it never gets finished. But thats silly because the whole point of this blog is for me to document my crafts and if all i ever do is start knitting projects... well then thats what i'll talk about! I really have had a lot of bad luck with my knitting projects. The viveka was frogged, venezia was too big, same problem with thermal, and i still cant even talk about the poor deep v vest. Wicked has about 2 inches left on the 2nd sleeve. So anyways, last weekend i started the fair isle u neck from the fall 06 vogue.

And this weekend i managed to finish off the back! I am modifying the sweater into a sweater vest. I have been looking for a pattern ever since the deep v vest fell through. The only part of the sweater pattern that i had to modify was the arm hole shaping, i wanted the arm holes to scoop in farther so that i can add ribbing later to finish it.  

I'm using elann's peruvian wool, natural/white as the main color and chocolate, orange, and lemon yellow as the accents. The original pattern called for 5 accent colors but i didn't like the idea of all the fair isle being triple-stranded so i pared it down. I really think i'm a fair isle addict! Hopefully by next weekend i will have a completed vest!

spring break? not for this girl

Instead of a nice relaxing, fun spring break, I get to move! Oh the joy. Seth and I moved about 15 minutes from our last house to a duplex closer to school. The rent is way cheaper and the location is great. So it's a good move in that respect but still... moving sucks! I took a ton of before pictures of the new place and i'll be taking some afters once I get all of the curtains put up and everything set up. I've been working on organizing my new craft room too!

here is where i'm at with the pretty clementine shawlette