Peacecat This 'n' That

Fire review

2011-11-27T15:04:00.001-05:00

I received my Kindle Fire on November 16 and decided to use it for awhile before posting a review.

The Fire is similar in size to my Kindle 2. The Fire is a bit narrower but twice as thick. It is also much heavier. In general I don't have too much problem with the weight since I usually have it laying on a table or my lap when I'm reading.

I love that the Fire is a multitasker. I tend to get bored rather easily and like to have multiple options to occupy myself. While the Kindle offers books and some games maybe a little background music, the Fire offers that and much more. The addition of apps makes the Fire a winner. I can check the weather, surf the internet, read and write email, shop and play games. Books download super fast. It is constrained to wi-fi connectivity which is probably the biggest downside I've found. With the addition of 3G this would be killer.

The touch screen took a little getting used to. I hate hate hate the unavoidable fingerprints all over the screen and keep a microfiber cloth in the case to constantly clean it. I did put a screen protector on it as soon as I got it but took it off after a week because it made the screen a tad blurry. Naked, the images are crystal clear although (as you can tell from the picture) the screen is quite reflective which is a problem in sunlight.

I purchased a hard cover for the Fire to help protect the screen. I chose a convertible cover since the Fire is also an excellent video player. I stream videos all the time. Streaming is smooth (if you notice lagging in your playback, reboot and it will solve the problem). The sound is great with built in stereo speakers (my iPod Touch has horrible, tin-ny sound without external speakers).

I'm not enamored with the Carousel, the Fire's feature that shows all of your recently accessed content on the top row of the display. You are not able to remove items from the Carousel, hopefully this will be available in a future update. I like to keep my stuff uncluttered and this is quite annoying. The flipping action is also irritating. Although you can see 4 or 5 items on the row you can only open the left most icon and I frequently scroll right past what I need. I generally just ignore the Carousel and tap the menu bar to go to the content I want be it books, apps or web. You can pin favorite apps to your home screen as well. You can see I've got mail, weather, Pulse (blog reader) and You Tube pinned to my first shelf. I'm not sure how many shelves you get since I've not really pinned too much yet.

My last complaint is the power switch. On the Kindle the switch is a slider at the top of the device. It's pretty darn hard to accidentally turn it off. On the Fire the switch is a push button at the bottom of the unit. I have no idea what brainiac came up with this ridiculous idea. I find if I'm holding it like a book I frequently push the button and put my screen to sleep or worse, reboot it. The option, of course, is just to hold it upside down. Once the device is taken out of sleep mode the screen automatically adjusts itself to the orientation you are holding it in.

All in all I LOVE my Fire. Would I recommend it to replace a Kindle? Depends on what you want to do. The Kindle is by far a better reading device. The screen is much easier on your eyes. Page turning is easier. In my opinion buttons are way easier than tapping at exactly the right spot to turn a page. Plus, I fell asleep reading on my Fire the other night and must have had my finger resting on the screen. I found my spot had jumped from 17% to 85% when I woke up! That couldn't happen on a Kindle. To my surprise (and disappointment) they did not include page numbers on the Fire's reader even though it is available on other Kindle reading apps. The Kindle is much lighter in weight so if you like to read for long periods of time or if your eyesight requires you to hold your book at a certain distance a Kindle would be a much better choice. Another big advantage to the Kindle is being able to organize your library by collections. Fire doesn't offer any user-driven organization of your library (again, hopefully this will come in an update at some point). If you are looking for more of a multi-function device, though, I wholeheartedly recommend the Fire!!

Eco Emi

2011-11-27T11:32:00.001-05:00

A few posts back I talked about Birchbox, a subscription beauty sample program. I stayed subscribed for 3 months but then dropped out. Too many of the products were things I just wouldn't use and it didn't seem like the best fit for me right now.

Since then I've heard of a number of other sample programs but one that particularly struck my fancy is Eco Emi. While Birchbox is generally just beauty products (although I did get a nutrition bar in one box) Eco Emi is all about the natural. The boxes feature all sorts of naturally minded products from beauty to home care to food. Since I'm making the effort to be more conscious of the products I use I decided to make the switch. Eco Emi is a bit more expensive at $15 per month. However, you get more samples per box. Plus there are discount codes for most of the items in the box so you could save some money if you decide to purchase full size products of the items you've sampled. My first box arrived this week.

I am really happy with my first box and will try every one of the samples. My box included a foot cream, shampoo, conditioner, essential mist (which is a fabulous face mist!), a chocolate bar (can not wait to try this one!!), a colored lip balm, hand cream, face mask and eye shadow. Not only are the products all things I normally use, I'm totally chuffed that they are made with ingredients I don't have to worry about.

The downsides (at least for me) about Eco Emi are that they charge you the first of the month prior to when they ship your box. I paid for November's box in the beginning of October. And they don't ship until late in the month, this month the boxes shipped on the 21st. So you've got quite a wait until you get your first box.

If you are interested in Eco Emi and want to see more of what they include in their boxes, just do a You Tube search for Eco Emi.

Coolest nail polish ever!

2011-11-05T14:54:00.000-04:00

A few months back my mother got a magnetic manicure at the salon and I was smitten. When I had vacation last week I treated myself to a professional manicure with the magnetic polish. The effect was stunning. The pro version of the polish is put out by LCN and they do sell to the public. They offer several colors and 2 magnet designs and you can buy them individually or by as a full kit. The magnets are sold separately.

There is now a consumer line that has the magnet built right into the cap. So when Sephora had their friends and family sale I snapped up both colors offered by Nails Inc. Today I'm wearing Houses of Parliament.

While the pro polish only requires one coat, Nails Inc instructs you to apply one coat, let it dry, then apply a second coat and while it is wet (you have to do each nail as you paint them) hold the magnetic cap over your nail to draw the magnetic particles to the surface. The picture shows what a gorgeous effect you get. I read in Vogue last month that you can gently move the magnet while the polish is setting to create different effects. I just held it steady for this look.

The nice thing about the Nails Inc cap is it has a little guide built in to help prevent you from touching the magnet to your nail while the polish is wet. I like to keep my nails on a flat surface to paint them, but it is much easier to hold your hand at eye level when using the magnet.

I only just painted my nails today so I'll append this post later in the week as to how well the polish wears.

Update: The polish lasted quite well. I painted on Saturday and made it to Wednesday before I saw noticeable chips. I did apply a top coat every other day. I work on a computer all day long so my nails do take a bit of a beating. The polish was a bear to remove with my Karma Organics remover. It took quite a bit more work than regular polish, but did come off completely. If I were in a hurry I would probably resort to acetone for this type of polish.

Verdict: I LOVE this polish. I hope Nails Inc comes out with a wider variety of colors and magnet patterns in the future.

Natural wonders

2011-11-05T10:40:00.003-04:00

Some time ago, way back in the days of Lime & Violet, they mentioned natural deodorant and sparked my curiosity. I blogged about it here. My quest to find a great natural deodorant slowly turned into a quest to green my whole beauty routine. Having read both Sophie Uliano's Gorgeously Green and the fabulous No More Dirty Looks, I've become more aware of what's in the beauty products I use and what the potential hazards of those chemicals are. While there's some things I am not currently willing to budge on (like my perfume and MAC lipstick), there are a lot of things that can easily be changed. It's not always easy to find truly natural products, but I just have to share some of the truly wonderful products I've found in my quest.

Lavanilla deodorant. This line is all some variation of vanilla scented, so if you don't like vanilla, you're kind of out of luck. However, the scent isn't terribly strong and does fade. As I said, natural deodorant is where the quest started. It's taken me over a year to find my HG product and this is it. Pricey as hell, but it seems to last forever. This deodorant doesn't cause any irritation, doesn't melt in hot weather, comes in a tube so it's not messy like most natural deodorants in cream form, smells great, and, most importantly, keeps me smelling great. And it is truly natural. No aluminum, no triclosan, no propylene glycol.

Pangea Organics. I purchased their dry skin sampler kit so I could try a variety of products. The stand outs have been the Balancing Oil, Rosemary & Orange Toner and the Mandarin & Rose Facial Cream. I didn't care for the cleanser or mask.

Karma Organics Organic Nail Polish Remover. This one blew me away. I'm a nail polish junkie. But I'm not crazy about the stink and toxic chemicals that comprise remover. When I saw this one mentioned on You Tube I decided to check it out. It is unlike any polish remover I've ever tried. This one is oil based. I place a cotton round over the bottle and do three spots of remover on the pad. This is enough to do both hands if the polish is light. For dark polish or if I have several coats of polish, I may have to do a second pad. It does take a bit more effort to remove the polish than with acetone which dissolves it nearly instantaneously. I rub each nail for a few seconds then move to the next nail. By the time I get back to the first nail the polish has softened and a bit of rubbing with the cotton pad removes every trace of polish (even the super darks come off cleanly). There is no offensive odor. Your bathroom won't stink for hours from the acetone laden cotton balls in the trash can. I purchased the lavender scent which smells just like lavender but even this scent fades quickly. As I said, the remover is oil based so you have to thoroughly wash your hands if you want to repolish right away. However, that oil base and all the massaging with a cotton pad leaves your nails & cuticles super hydrated.

And finally, yes, a natural perfume (there ARE good ones out there!)

Harvey Prince. I just found this one. I found a coupon for a free sample size rollon bottle of Eau de Creme so I decided to give it a try. Sweet, gourmand. Very lovely. Reminds me of a less vulgar version of Thierry Mugler Angel. They also sent a sample vial of Eau Flirt which is a lavender pumpkin scent and also fabulous. Score, there's now a coupon here for a free sample rollon of Eau Flirt! I'm pretty sure you can't use both at the same time and I'm not sure the Eau de Creme coupon is still active, but if you are interested, go check it out.

As I continue my quest for natural goodies I'll be sure to post them up here.

It's beginning to look a lot like...

2011-10-30T08:39:00.001-04:00

Halloween? Tomorrow is Halloween. Yesterday we had our first snow of the season.

According to the local weatherman, this was the earliest snow in 39 years. I certainly don't remember snow this early! We also set a record for October snow at 5 inches. I'm not sure exactly how much snow we got here since it was one of those really wet snows that sinks down on itself. Thankfully it's supposed to get back to seasonal temperatures and weather in the next few days so this snow should be short lived. We were just starting to enjoy the beautiful fall leaves! I am so not ready for winter!!

Fire

2011-10-02T18:35:00.000-04:00

This week Amazon finally announced the upcoming release of its tablet computer, Kindle Fire.

I've been anxiously awaiting the announcement like most other Kindle fans and I jumped right in line when ordering opened. I was hoping for a 3G model but it looks like that won't be available until maybe next year. I'm excited to be able to browse the web and read my books on one device. I'm also interested to see how their apps stack up next to Apple's. Timing kind of stinks since it won't arrive until after our vacation. Full review when it does arrive.

Birchbox

2011-07-12T19:51:00.000-04:00

I don't know if I'm late to the party or if this sort of thing is just becoming popular, but I just discovered Birchbox. Birchbox is a subscription based service that for $10 sends you a monthly goodie box of beauty samples. I watched various reviews on You Tube and most were very positive so I decided to give it a try.

You can enroll on a monthly basis for $10/month or for a full year for $110 and save a few dollars. I opted for the monthly plan. Boxes ship by the 10th of each month and I received mine on the 9th. Here's a look at what mine included:

It is my understanding that there can be slight variations in the boxes so yours might have contained one or two different items.

There's an almond snack bar (that I haven't tried yet).
A mini bottle of Zoya nail polish in Shay. The color is a beige nude with just a hint of frost. Perfect work color. This is my first time trying Zoya polish. It applied evenly without streaks and is going on 3 days chip free.
A sample of Purity facial cleanser from Philosophy. This creamy cleanser smells wonderful and left my skin clean but not taught.
Ahava Mineral Hand Cream. It's a nice basic hand cream that soaks in quickly without any residual greasiness. Has a rather strong herbal smell that I'm not crazy about, but otherwise good.
And finally a bottle of Redken Shine Flash spray. I'm not sure what to make of this one. Its basically an aerosol finishing spray to add shine to your hair. It stinks to high heaven. I'll pass on this one and stick with my argan oil for shine!

All in all I'm thrilled with my first box. I love surprises. I love samples. I love cheap. The Birchbox seems to fill the bill in all respects. There are other sample boxes out there and maybe some day I'll check some of those out as well.

Heartsy

2011-06-14T12:11:00.000-04:00

For all you fellow Etsy addicts out there, here's a site worth checking out. Heartsy.me is a deal site similar to Groupon where you can buy store credits for a reduced rate. All of the merchants are Etsy sellers. Most of the deals I've seen are better than 50% savings (like $13 for a $30 credit). The deals change every day and they offer a daily newsletter to keep you informed of current and upcoming deals. I believe you get a $5 credit just for signing up and it's totally free to join. Although I haven't purchased any vouchers just yet, I've seen a lot of interesting new sellers. If you are an Etsy fan like me, it's definitely worth checking out.

2011 Garden

2011-06-12T10:25:00.000-04:00

This is quite a bit later than last year's garden post but I wanted to make sure I didn't miss documenting this year's garden.

Again, we've moved stuff around still trying to find the optimal layout.

The tomatoes are now mostly located in the smaller side bed. We started with 4 Early Girl and 4 Roma but lost a few to the rabbits. I purchased some new plants and think we've got a yellow grape tomato in there now too.

In the larger long bed we've got garlic (planted last fall and absolutely thriving), onions, cucumbers, radishes (which are refusing to form bulbs and just bolting instead), a variety of bell peppers and eggplant. I did end up fencing in the eggplant since the rabbits seemed to think they are the gourmet treat of the season and kept eating them down to the ground.

The big bed has a few rows of okra. Only about half sprouted though. The last few years dad and I have both had a dickens of a time getting okra to grow. Next year I must remember to over plant and thin down rather than sowing just what we need.

We've also got a number of tomato plants in this bed. A few yellow tomatoes, a beefsteak and a Better Boy (I think, forgot to write all the names down). We didn't intend to have so many tomatoes, but the plants mostly come 4 to a pack and I hate to throw them away even if we only need one or two. Need to pick up a few more cages before these guys get too much bigger.

More pepper plants along the wall, I think these are all the yellow peppers. A row of kohlrabi. 2 zucchini plants and a number of corn plants. The corn is a funny story. We put corn out for the rabbits and squirrels in the winter (yes I know that's probably why the little buggers are visiting my garden since we encourage them to look here for food, but they are so cute to watch). Anyway, the squirrel seems to have buried a good bit of that corn all over our yard. A few weeks ago C and I were trying to figure out what these tall plants were growing up so much faster than the grass. Figuring out it was corn, we dug a few of them up and replanted them in the garden. I was sure they wouldn't survive transplanting, but it was worth a try. Well, sure enough they have survived and seem to be doing quite well. We had never really considered planting corn since we follow South Beach and corn is not a regular part of the diet. The thought of field corn had never crossed our minds. It will be fun to see what we get since we had ornamental corn as well as yellow field corn out during the winter. If this works, we'll definitely make ornamental corn part of our garden plans in the future.

The Guide

2011-06-06T12:10:00.000-04:00

As I've talked about here, the last few years I have eschewed mainstream perfumes in favor of indie made perfume oils. It's been fun and interesting and I've tried a lot of good scents. But lately the girly-girl in me has been crying out for something more grown up. Something beautiful and classic.

I have never been much of a perfume aficionado sticking to drugstore brands and Avon scents. Some of these are terrific. But again, I wanted to branch out into "the good stuff". Where to start?

I found some fabulous sites on the internet with extensive perfume descriptions and user reviews. Some of my favorites are:

Fragrantica

OzMoz

Now Smell This

However, my absolute favorite resource I've found so far is Perfume: The Guide. This 600+ page book includes over 1,200 perfume reviews. Most are by Luca Turin although his partner Tania Sanchez gives her point of view on many perfumes as well. This is not a book of unbiased reviews, these 2 have very definite opinions about what they like and what they don't and aren't afraid to say it. They routinely bash fragrances they hate with terms like dismal, dreck, and dreadful. However, there are tons of positive reviews and some so eloquently written it leaves you tempted to drop the book, grab the car keys and head to the mall to search out a bottle. Every perfume has a two word description such as oriental floral, fruity patchouli, woody citrus that gives you an idea of the character of the scent. The reviews themselves often mention the notes, but not always. They offer a one to 5 star rating for each perfume which I find mostly unuseful. They also provide a one to 4 $ symbol to give you a general idea of how costly a perfume is. I don't always agree with their opinions on scents. They rate Bond's Chinatown 5 stars but I've smelled it and hate it. They hate the Burberry scents which I love. However, taking it all with a grain of salt, I don't think there's a better guide to today's perfumes out there. If you're at all interested in perfume, be sure to check this book out.

Another vintage Singer

2011-06-05T11:51:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I spent the day with hubby's family for the public auction of his grandfather's estate. The 2 hour drive was lovely once we got past Harrisburg. None of us are city drivers so the heavy traffic and numerous lane merges were a bit nerve-racking. But once we got out of the city, the minor highway was smooth and uncongested and the scenery was stunning. The day was absolutely fabulous, mid 70's and sunny with a gentle breeze. We did get a downpour that lasted an hour or so right at the end of the sale, but by then there wasn't much left so it wasn't too much of an issue.

The sale was just outside of Belleville, a largely Amish community nestled in a picturesque valley surrounded by mountains. The home was his grandparents "getaway" place for years then after Blanche passed away, Buck made it his permanent home. The sale had a fair attendance, maybe 70 or so at it's height. Better than half were local Amish folk who seemed to be there more for entertainment than to buy. C was mostly interested in visiting with his family but I was paid attention to the sale in the hopes of taking home a few family keepsakes.

I picked up a large lot of Blanche's doilies and table runners. There are a lot of beautiful pieces in the lot and I'm hoping they clean up well since many are musty and stained from years of use then storage. I also got a box of her hand cut quilting templates and quilt patterns which I haven't had a chance to go through yet. Blanche loved to sew and the few times I got to spend time chatting with her we loved to talk about sewing.

C got some of Buck's old radios which he was thrilled to discover all work and have great sound. We will enjoy using one of the portables to listen to the baseball games this summer out on the deck.

But the absolute topper to the day was getting one of Blanche's old Singer sewing machines. It is my understanding she had a lot of sewing machines. There were 5 at yesterday's sale alone. The 3 electric portable machines actually went unsold (I won't get on my soapbox about how poorly the auctioneers handled the sale, but there was no reason that should have happened.) Unfortuneately, we were in my mother-in-law's vehicle and did not have room to transport them or I would certainly have taken them as well. There was another vintage Singer in cabinet that sold as part of the furniture auction, but again, it would not fit in the vehicle so I had no option but to let it go.

The machine I got was sitting off to the side of the auctioneers stand when we arrived, among the pile of unsold items actually. The minute I saw it and pointed it out to C he insisted I had to get it. I was thrilled when I asked one of the staff if it has been sold, since we arrived about an hour in to the sale. She said no she thought it would be part of the furniture sale. Turns out, they did not sell it as part of the furniture. In fact, while the furniture in the home was being sold by the auctioneer, his wife continued the household goods sale outside. As luck would have it, she put the machine up during this time I and got it for the starting bid of $5. Insanity. I thought for sure one of the Mennonite would have tried for it, or even the Amish since this machine is convertible (can be used as a treadle machine or electric). C's family all agreed Blanche would be thrilled I got it and I agree.

So here she is, my "new" Singer 99

She cleaned up fabulously. The cabinet is worn and the varnish is crackled under the surface, but not peeling. The support arm is present and there is a hidden drawer where we found a box containing all the attachments and a ton of old cardboard bobbins.

The machine runs very well. The drive belt is worn, dried out and cracked with age. But it works. The light is even working.

There is an issue with the bobbin though. When the bobbin cover is on, the bobbin won't turn. Looking at the underside of the cover it appears the case is not properly adjusted and is rubbing the cover. Fortunately we have a gentleman here in town who works on old sewing machines. I'm hoping he can replace the worn belt and figure out what's going on with the bobbin.

All in all, I am thrilled. I love old Singers to begin with. Having one with family history is priceless.

A few facts I've found about the Singer 99...

My model was manufactured 1956 at the Elizabethport factory in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

There were 25,000 made

The 99 is a 3/4 head size machine

It is NOT a Featherweight

It is a convertible machine, can be used as a treadle machine or electric.

Sign of spring

2011-05-15T08:20:00.000-04:00

This morning when I went out to retrieve the paper I noticed a pile of petals on the porch around my pansy planter. I figured the storm last night might have knocked them off. But then I noticed a baby robin perched in the flowers. I retreated back inside and grabbed the camera

Isn't he a cute little thing. Although she can't be seen, the momma robin is close by. I hear her talking up a storm.

Meanwhile, Stuart and Quinn are holding vigil to protect our home from the insidious marauder.

Eden's Secret soaps

2011-03-22T07:25:00.000-04:00

The other day I received an unexpected package in the mail. I was delighted when I saw the pink box and Eden logo. But I was also a little perplexed at how Karen might have gotten my address. Turns out there was a bugaboo in her website last month. I was window shopping on the site a few weeks back and apparently the order went through inadvertently. I notified Karen immediately hoping that she had already realized the issue and had corrected it. She sent me back the sweetest email saying I could keep the soaps with her blessing. All she asked was that I talk about her soaps. Well, I can sure do that! First the eye candy...

Look how gorgeously the soaps are packaged. You've got to check out her You Tube channel to see how she hand cuts and wraps every single piece of soap she sells. The attention to detail is amazing. Those labels are hand cut around all that fancy scallop work. The soap names are hand written on the back of the labels and all tied up with curly ribbon bows.

I received 4 soaps in all. The first is Cashmere Creme soap.

I cut off a piece from the end and have been using it as my kitchen sink soap. The soap has poppy seeds in it which provide a nice gentle scrub. The lather is lush and creamy and the scent is light and does not linger on my skin. My skin is left soft even after multiple washings when cooking. I'm very impressed with this soap.

Next is Kismet Karma. This pale orange soap is reminiscent of Lush's Karma, one of my favorite Lush scents.

Orange and patchouli. She decorated the soap with a dried orange slice and a touch of glitter.

For me the highlight of the package was the cupcake soap. I've been obsessing over the current trend in cake and cupcake shaped soaps. Especially with being on the diet, it's appealing to have my cake and NOT eat it!

Although it looks like a cupcake, it is indeed soap. Top to bottom. Having made soap, I am in awe of the artistry involved. I'm sure it boils down to the right recipe to get the soap batter to a consistency that can be piped to look like frosting. Karen nails it. She decorated the top with some tiny soap slices and a real miniature rose bud.

The freebie soap she says is a glycerin soap which I'm guessing is what I would call melt & pour. But it's not like any melt & pour I've done. It reminds me a bit of one of my favorite commercial soaps, Primal Elements. It has a creamy rose pink base with translucent swirls throughout.

All in all I am truly impressed with Karen's work. Her soaps are not only beautiful, but luxurious to use as well. She also produces other bath & body products which she sells on her site, Eden's Secret. Do check out her store and You Tube videos. And Karen, if you read this, thanks again!

The mug to end all mugs

2011-03-05T09:41:00.000-05:00

I made it through a very large portion of my life before developing a love for coffee. I'd always been a tea girl. But over the last year or two, I've fallen for the elixir that is coffee. Mostly flavored coffee and then still mostly chocolate flavors. Sweet with cream, please. I received a cute little 4 cup coffee maker as a gift and it's just perfect since the hubby doesn't drink coffee. Although it does irritate me that a "cup" of coffee is only like 6 oz. What's up with that?

So I've been searching for a sheep mug to hold my morning brew. For the longest time I wanted one of Jennie the Potter's mugs, but they tend to sell out as soon as she lists them. Then recently I discovered Peg's Table Top and was smitten. Peg makes mugs, trivets, yarn bowls and platters. Here themes are mostly knitting or vegetable related. Her designs are whimsical and colorful. I convoed her and asked if she'd be willing to make a mug to my request and she happily agreed. It only took a few weeks to get my order since I happened to catch her right before a firing. Here is the piece of art I received...

I absolutely adore this mug. It is huge. Huge I tell you. She states they are 16oz mugs but mine holds that entire 4 "cup" pot of coffee. It is a literal coffee bucket. I could not be more thrilled with it. I highly recommend her shop if you are looking for a nice big mug.

....and now it's March

2011-03-05T09:15:00.001-05:00

2011 is flying by. Work is keeping me hopping and my bandwidth has been low. There's been some knitting and some reading and tons of time spent watching indy soapers on You Tube.

Knitting...

The Tardis socks have been frogged yet again. I appear to be incapable of getting the floats and/or gauge loose enough to fit over a human heel. R suggested I might convert the pattern to mittens. While it burns me to admit defeat on the socks, I am considering the option. For now (and until work calms down and I can loosen up) the whole project is in time-out.

I finished the first Everlasting Monkey sock and am motoring up the 2nd. Again, love the pattern, love the yarn.

The Shipwreck shawl has maybe another row or two finished. I put the kibosh to the idea of changing beads. The cost is just way more than I'm willing to pay when I've already spent this much on beads. I'm coming to terms with spending time moving beads and making sure I move them a good long way each time so I can enjoy more knitting time in between.

Fylingdales even saw some daylight this week. Oh how I love cabling. I really need to get this sweater done so I can wear it.

Books...

I read Death on Demand, the first of that series from Carolyn Hart. Since I had read a later book in the series already, I could rule out at least two of the suspects right off the bat. And it wasn't terribly hard to figure out who the killer was. But it was an easy and enjoyable read.

I'm still reading Essence and Alchemy which is quite enjoyable. I'll never be a master perfumer, but it is wonderful to peek inside Aftel's mind. Her passion for scent is obvious and infectious.

I did not enjoy The Soap Maker's Workshop. The book can't seem to decide if it's geared towards home or industrial soap making. It was written by a husband and wife team which may account for the two perspectives. I didn't feel I gained much from reading it and wouldn't recommend it if you are looking for a good soaping book. Pick up Everything Soapmaking if you want a good soap book.

And speaking of soap, I'd like to recommend some excellent You Tube channels by home soapmakers. I've purchased from some of these folks, others I've just ogled at. It is fascinating to see different methods of soaping and hear the soapers describe their soaps. These are some of my favorites in no particular order...
The Future Primitive (Tiggy)
Sugarbubbles Soap (Candy)
Beacon Creations
Wicked Scentuals
Snowblum (not a soaper but a reviewer)
Edens Secret

Can you believe it's February already?!

2011-02-06T10:33:00.000-05:00

Woosh...that's the last two months gone by. Things have been busy busy busy and I've not felt much like getting on the computer and putting down thoughts. I do have much to talk about, though, so here's a bit of what I've been up to.

The holidays were lovely, as always. Having both Christmas and New Years over weekends made for leisurely relaxing holidays.

I treated myself to the iPod I've been craving. I saved for a year and was able to get the 32 GB iPod Touch generation 4. I debated for the longest time if I wanted to spend the extra scratch for the 32 gb over the 8 and I am so glad I did. Not that I've come anywhere close to filling it...yet. But I am able to load up every single podcast I want to and the inevitable backlog of unlistened to episodes all fit nicely. I'm able to watch video podcasts on it so I'm able to stay more caught up with Round the Twist and the Knit Girllls.

I mainly wanted it for apps and I've not been disappointed. My favorite knitting app is Knit Counter. I use it for every knitting project that requires counting. I love that you can link counters. It makes it super easy to track pattern rows, increases/decrease, cable turns, etc.

Games are quite fun as well with my favorites being Zombie Farm and Angry Birds. I also adore being able to watch You Tube videos and surf the net. Not to forget the Kindle app. It is fantastic. I didn't think I'd like reading on the small screen, but the text is clear and very easy to read. Plus it syncs with my Kindle so I if I find I'm away from home and have a few minutes to read when I get back to my Kindle it will advance to the furthest page read. Pretty cool.

I can't remember where I was at with knitting the last time I posted. I recently finished the Bitterroot Shawl and it is gorgeous.

I need to get a better picture but I think you can see it pretty well here when it was blocking. I had a lot of beads left over. I don't think I missed any so maybe the packs of beads had more than I thought. The shawl was knit from Knit Picks Shadow in Cattail Heather with 6/0 Toho seed beads in Olivine.

I'm working on a pair of Monkey socks in Dream in Color Everlasting.

The color is a dark foresty green which I can't seem to capture. Everlasting is similar to Wollmeise's base. Not quite as cotton like. Extremely nice to work with. I highly recommend it if you can't get a hold or Wollmeise.

The Tardis socks are finally starting to resemble the Tardis.

These socks have been a bit of a challenge for me. Stranded colorwork is probably at the bottom of my list for knitting I enjoy. In socks its especially problematic because it has very little stretch. My first attempt at the sock wouldn't go over my heel. The socks are destined for someone with smaller feet than mine, but I didn't think it was worth the risk of them not fitting. So I ripped them out and started over with a larger needle and a concerted effort to keep the floats looser. The results are much better this time. I'm down to the solid portion of the sock which should fly by.

I'm still slogging along on the Shipwreck shawl. The beads are absolutely horrible. The 8/0 beads called for are far too small for the finger weight yarn. They are so difficult to move, my fingers ache every time I have to move beads, which is pretty much every time sit down to knit. So I'm lucky if I get a row done a week. I'm seriously contemplating ordering larger beads in the same colors. I've only done a few rows with the 6s and don't think the different size beads would be too noticeable when it's all said and done. I could save the 6s for a laceweight project.

Hooray for warm socks

2010-12-10T10:36:00.000-05:00

Our neck of the woods is frigid cold this December. It's weather like this makes makes me love my handknit socks all the more. And just in time for this cold snap, I've just finished two new pairs.

First up are a pair of plain vanilla socks in Knitter's Brewing Company's Cabernet Harvest Sock-a-holic yarn.

These were my conversation socks for the nights C and I sat out by the firepot this late summer and fall. I think the colors are gorgeous and the hand is sturdy yet soft (not scratchy).

The second pair are my very first Wollmeise socks in My Old Blue Jeans Twin. The pattern is Hermione's Everyday socks.

I loved knitting these socks and I adore this yarn base. It has an almost cotton like feel to it but with the give of wool. The yarn is on the heavier side of fingering weight. I used a US 1.5 (2.5mm) needle for a dense yet not at all stiff fabric. I can not wait to see how these wear.

Of course I've cast on a new pair of socks, another pair of plain vanilla socks this time with some of my own hand dyed yarn.

More mitts

2010-11-21T09:32:00.000-05:00

As a follow up to the mitts I knit for my sister, I indulged in a pair of mitts for me. These cute little mitts were on display at Yarn Love when we visited there a few weeks back and I couldn't resist the them.

The pattern is the Welted Fingerless Gloves from Churchmouse Yarns. The yarn is Silk Blend by Manos del Uruguay. These are an extremely simple and fast knit. The pattern uses a one row buttonhole for the thumb opening, the first time I've seen a thumb done this way.

The yarn is incredibly soft and warm. In the past I've not been happy with this type of softly spun singles yarn because they tend to pill. I'm interested to see if the silk content helps to reduce this tendency. I've worn them many times these last few weeks and so far they look as good as new.

Another finished object, but this time from the sewing front. A recent Knit Picks catalog featured a cross over product from their sister-site, the quilting store Connecting Threads. KP is offering a sewing kit that includes material and patterns to make a needle case, backpack and drawstring project bags. I chose the winter variety of fabrics and made the needle case.

I would rate the pattern as intermediate, not for a beginning sewer. Were I to sew another one (and it's likely I will since I'm so happy with the case) I would change up the pockets a bit. All the edges are finished with a turned under edge, but I think a doubled over pocket would be sturdier and also look more finished. Of course, that uses more fabric so I understand their decision to finish the pockets as they did.

There are PLENTY of pockets in this case. There are enough pockets to accommodate an entire set of interchangeable tips as well as pockets for the various cables. The pockets on the right are designed for circular needles. I have far too many circs to move them into this case, but might put a few of my most frequently used needles in there. There are pockets for dpns as well, although those too are empty in my case since I rarely use them. I love this case. The only drawback is that the pockets aren't labeled with the needle sizes and KP doesn't mark the size on their needles. I think I'm going to order their needle id tags and sew them to the pockets like buttons for easier identification.

October Leaves

2010-10-31T10:08:00.000-04:00

Although this could be a post about the glorious fall foliage display C and I observed this week in our travels, I am instead talking of the October Leaves fingerless mitts I just finished. My sister requested a pair of fingerless mitts for work. Since knitting requests from family are like kryptonite to me, I eagerly set out to find the perfect pattern. I've made several different mitts over the years and find my favorites are the ones knit with fingering weight yarn (sock yarn). They fit close to the hand so they are unobtrusive when you are trying to type or use your hands for any reason, yet they still provide plenty of warmth. I also wanted a pattern with a bit of interest. The October Leaves pattern by Abbie Tilden looked to be the perfect choice.

The color requested was grey or black and a quick search of my stash produced a gorgeous grey superwash sock yarn. I was off and running. The mitts only took 11 days to complete. The pattern calls for cables up both sides of the hand. But after a few rows in this fashion, I decided the outside cable was too much. I much preferred the single cable running up the thumb side and blooming into the leaves that frame the thumb.This pattern is super easy. I manged most of the 4 stitch cables without a cable needle. When I did need a cable needle I used a lightly sanded round toothpick since none of the cable needles I own were small enough for such fine yarn. This worked wonderfully. The only other modification I made was to knit the top (hand) ribbing on smaller needles to keep the fit snug around the knuckles. There's nothing worse on mitts than the top edge being loose and bunching up.

The only problem I had with this project was the yarn. The yarn was a gorgeous mottled grey handdyed sock yarn. It is delightfully soft and a pleasure to knit with. However, I washed the mitts and then laid them outside to dry. When I went back to check on them a few hours later, I discovered the side facing up had turned green!I've never had a yarn change color on me. It was so weird. After checking the yarn label, I found the dyer DID say to dry them out of direct sunlight, so it is entirely my fault. The green was an interesting color and had I been able to get the second side to fade the same way they might have been usable. However, the request was not for green mitts so I took to my dye pot and overdyed them. Two dyebaths later, the mitts emerged a fabulous charcoal grey.

They are on my hands now as I type and I adore them. Sis, I do hope you love them too. It's a wrench parting with them but it makes me feel good knowing you'll have warm (and I must say, smartly dressed) hands thanks to me.

Sherlock

2010-10-25T17:09:00.001-04:00

A few months ago when R first told me about the new Sherlock coming to PBS's Masterpiece Mystery, I was dubious. The preview looked flashy and I just couldn't imagine Sherlock Holmes set in current day London. Few can match Jeremy Brett's portrayal of the sleuth in my book. Thus I tucked it away in the back of my mind and more or less forgot about it. While browsing the channel guide last night I discovered the show had started so I decided to give it a watch. Wow. I mean, WOW. Benedict Cumberbatch is amazing as Holmes. He plays the fast talking detective to a T. The character observes everything and processes his observations lightening fast. Martin Freeman's Watson is an excellent foil to the genius. I love the way the show uses text cues to help the viewer get the clues. My one and only disappointment was the scene where they tracked the GPS location of the victim's cell phone and were stymied by it's apparent location. Given other clues in the scene, specifically Mrs. Hudson's announcement, it was pretty obvious where the phone was and who the killer was. But everyone was standing around scratching their heads. Sherlock does, of course, figure it out, and maybe it was just a dramatic pause to show his thought process. Other than that one minor complaint, I give the show highest marks.

Favorite line "Dear god, what is it like in your funny little brains? It must be so boring."

Sherlock is available on DVD as well as on demand at PBS.org (I assume this will only be for a while though).

Good stuff

2010-10-24T14:56:00.000-04:00

My Future Primitive order arrived this week and as expected, this soap rocks.The soaps are all wrapped in pretty glassine paper with cigar band labels. They smell phenomenal (although you can not smell them through the wrapper, I opened up the ends to smell them.) In addition to the 3 soaps I ordered, Tiggy sent a sample of her White Witch soap which immediately found a home by the bathroom sink. I've been using it all week and it is simply divine. I know, I'm gushing, but really, this soap is quite possibly the best I've ever tried. Not only does it look glorious, but it is also darn good soap. The bars are nice and hard and work into a creamy highly scented lather. The scent is long lasting on my skin. The ultimate test is face washing. I can use this on my face with out even a hint dryness. I will definitely be buying more soaps from her.

Next good thing this week is applesauce. With local apples being dirt cheap and my co-worker extolling the virtues of homemade applesauce, I decided to give it a try. I washed and cut up enough apples to fill my 6 quart dutch oven (peels, cores and all go in the pot). I used a variety of apples...Rome, Macintosh, Stayman, and Yellow Delicious and just about an inch of water. Cover and cook on high until the water boils. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the apples are super soft. I let it cool slightly then ran the cooked apples through my food mill. From about 5 quarts of apples, I ended up with 3 pints of applesauce.
So so yummy and incredibly easy. 2 pints went into the freezer and the other jar will disappear in no time, I'm sure. I will definitely be buying more apples this week to make a big batch for the freezer.

I finished reading Knit One, Kill Two by Maggie Sefton this week. It is the first in a knitting themed cozy mystery series. This was an enjoyable, light read. It is obvious it is meant to be a series as there were tons of characters introduced and a lot of story lines that didn't seem to have resolutions. The characters were all very likable and the setting a dream come true for a knitter (the knit shop is set side by side with a coffee shop/cafe in an old farmhouse, sigh). It was refreshing to read a cozy where the main character didn't end up at death's doorstep through their stupid heroics. I'm sure I'll be reading more from this series.

Now I'm trying to settle on my next book and having difficulty finding something to fit my mood. I've started several books this week and nothing seems the right fit. Instead, I'm watching season 4 of Corner Gas. Hilarious!

Scary Gary

2010-10-19T12:27:00.002-04:00

I've been meaning to post about this comic for ages.

Scary Gary follows the "life" of vampire Gary. Gary is reformed and doesn't hunt people. He lives with his henchman, Leopold, a goblin-type creature who is most definitely NOT reformed. The strip is hilarious and smart. Do check it out if you want a good laugh.

Soap p*rn

2010-10-16T14:21:00.000-04:00

Everyone knows, I've got a weird obsession with soap (the stuff that gets you clean, not that crap on afternoon TV). My obsession with soap led me to start soaping a few years back. I've made a good number of batches of soap, some good, few unusable, most just average. Soap making is easy. Soap artistry, on the other hand, is something I have yet to achieve. I'm not giving up soaping. But I have allowed myself the luxury and shear pleasure of browsing (and buying) soaps from some mighty talented soapers. Here I'm highlighting the ones I ordered from recently. (pictures captured from each vendor).

I picked up a few melt and pour type soaps from Solstice Scents a month or so ago.

Monster Mash


Harvest Moon

Monster Mash and Harvest Moon. These smell great and are quiet pretty to look at. She uses a good glycerin soap base that isn't at all drying to the skin. They leave a light scent on your skin as well. If you like M and P soaps, these would be great to try.

But what really makes my heart sing is fabulous cold process soap. And boy-howdy have I found some FANTASTIC examples.

The Morbid the Merrier has become my number one favorite indy perfumer. Her Sleepy Hollow scents are fabulous. And her general collection Absinthe and Cocoa Absinthe are my new favorite day to day scents. She released a few soaps related to the Sleepy Hollow series and I snatched them both up...


Baltus

Brom

Sadly, there are no companion perfumes, but I can content myself with soaps. These are generous 4-5 oz bars wrapped with a paper band adorned with Lysa's sideshow-esque labels. There's a sort of plastic half wrap that keeps the tops and bottoms of the soaps clean while sitting on the shelf but still allows you to smell the delicious scents. I haven't tried them yet but am storing them in my chest of drawers where they keep my tee shirts smelling yummy.

Next up I picked up some soaps form English Major Soaps. These soaps all have a literary theme. They come wrapped in pages from an old book. (For the life of me I can't get pictures to load so you'll have to click the links to see the soaps.) The 3 I chose are Cask of Amontillado, Beowulf and Dante's Inferno. The imbed in Cask is supposed to resemble the bars of a cell, awesome, and the scent is definitely wine like. Beowulf is scented with dragonsblood. Dante had the least amount of scent so I put that one to use right away. The soap lathers well and is gentle on the skin.

When I saw Future Primitive on someone's blog (might have been TMTM) I about fell off my seat. Now THESE are some rockin' soaps.

No. 11


One Ring

Lagoon

Her scents lean more towards nature (lavender, geranium, patchouli, etc). I pretty much want every scent she offers. She's in England and shipping can add up fast so I limited myself to 2 bars and a sample. One Ring, Lagoon and No 11. I'm waiting for my order to arrive but I am sure they won't disappoint.

Beads!

2010-09-23T11:24:00.000-04:00

I've spent a few nights this week working on stringing the beads for my Shipwreck shawl. As I said last time, the pattern calls for 5000 beads. I've strung about 1000 beads using a dental floss threader. It was slow going at first since the threader is rather flimsy and I wasn't able to just skim it through the jar of beads and pick them up. I was picking up a few beads between my fingers and more or less feeding them onto the threader. Very tedious. I've since discovered I can put a small pile of beads in the palm of my hand and pick them up with the threader pretty easily (note to self, get a big eye needle!) This has greatly speeded up the process, not to mention saved the fatigue on my fingers. The pattern calls for 8/0 seed beads, which is what I bought. I tested a few I had on hand before placing my order and thought they would work fine. Now that I have many strung, they seem a bit small. They fit rather snugly on the yarn. I guess that's good, they won't shift around when the are placed in the shawl. And with the number of beads needed, using 6/0 would add quite a bit of weight. I finished the Madeira pattern this morning. A few more knit rows then the stitch count doubles and I start the net. I'm excited to start beading. The shawl has been fun so far. The net is going to be tedious. 590 stitches per round. All yo/k2tog. For a jillion rows. For some people, this time flies, for others it's mind numbingly boring. I don't know which camp I'll land in, hopefully the first!!

Knitting roundup

2010-09-19T09:10:00.001-04:00

Finally, a finished object.

These are the Purl When Ready socks from The Big Book of Socks knit in Liberty's Yarn Bluetopia Tea Party. The color defies photography, they are much prettier in person. The yarn is a light fingering with a tight twist. Knit on US 0 needles it produced a dense yet still drape-able fabric. The socks are very comfortable and I hope the combination of tight twist yarn knit at a firm gauge will result in a long lasting pair of socks. I am not a fan of knitting socks at this gauge because they seem to take forever. My current sock projects are the Hermione's Everyday sock in Wollmeise Twin and a plain vanilla sock in Knitter's Brewing Company Sockaholic. Both of are true to heavy fingering weight, much more pleasurable to knit.

Most of my knitting time the last week has been devoted to my new obsession, the Shipwreck Shawl. I have no idea what triggered this wild hare, but I am smitten. Shipwreck is a circular shawl knit in fingering weight yarn. The center is a lace medallion made of 3 separate designs. The rest of the shawl is a randomly beaded net pattern. I'm knitting mine as the pattern calls for in Knit Picks Bare Gloss yarn. After the shawl is complete you dye it. I intend to dye mine similar to the original, a stormy blue/gray.

This picture was taken a few days ago having finished the center strawberry pattern, bleeding hearts pattern and just beginning the final motif, Madeira. I am now 2/3 done with Madeira. The charts are pretty easy to follow, 10 stitch repeats. There is some trickiness with some of the rows where you have to move your starting row marker. This was confusing to me at first, especially the rows where you move the marker to the right. I've had 2 rows with mistakes that I had to tink back (un-knit each stitch, one by one) entire rows. This is very frustrating and time consuming, but in lace you just can't fudge over mistakes. It is pretty easy to spot mistakes on the next row, though, so I've not had to tink back more than one row. I hope to start the beaded net by midweek. I purchased my beads from Artbeads (love them). I couldn't find a bead mix anywhere that floated my boat, so I made my own using 10 different shades of blue and black.

They are all Toho rounds size 8/0. Colors include: Amethyst Gunmetal, Navy Iris, Rainbow Black Diamond, Rainbow Moss Green, Iris Gray, Matte Gunmetal, Metallic Hematite, Matte Metallic Navy Iris, Silver-lined Sapphire, Deep Plum-lined Aqua. I think the mix is beautiful and am anxious to see how it looks on the shawl. The pattern calls for 5000 beads. Most of the tips and hints I've read advise not to string them all at once. I'll probably work on stringing later today so I'm ready to go when I reach the net.

Button jar

2010-08-29T12:00:00.002-04:00

Hands up everyone that loves button jars. If you grew up with a grandma, mom or aunt who sewed, you probably know the joy that is a button jar. They are an endless source of fun for a child...sorting by color or size or number of holes, just rolling it around to hear the sound it makes. As an adult, I think they are aesthetically beautiful. Not to mention useful if you lose a button or are a crafter like me. And anyone who sews knows buttons are not that cheap any more. All the more reason my heart leaped when I found this little gem at the flea market today.

A jar full of green buttons marked $4.50 (although the vendor only charged me $4, sweet). C asked me what I had planned for them. Nothing really. They'll sit on the shelf and look pretty. I'll pluck a gem here and there when I have need. The kid in me could not resist dumping them all out when I got home and looking for treasure.

The jar did not disappoint. These were my favorites. Look at those colors! And see the nifty little 3 leaf clover on that one? Gotta find a special project for that one. Later I'll sort them and see how many are singles and how many are sets. The 8 year old in me is beaming.

Massive catching up post

2010-08-08T12:11:00.000-04:00

I can't believe it's been nearly a month since I posted! Summer leaves me lethargic and not all that talkative. But it's time for a bit of a catch up.

I read Mint Julep Murder by Carolyn Hart. This was the first time I've read one of her books. Sometimes her style rubbed me the wrong way but in hindsight I think it could be that I just didn't know the characters backgrounds (this book was #9 in a series) so some things were assumed the reader knew and understood, but I didn't. Other than that, I really enjoyed the book. Lots of red herrings and false leads so that it looked like just about ANYONE could have been the murderer.

I also finally got around to finishing Size 12 Is Not Fat by Meg Cabot. This was another good read. Not a diet or exercise or motivation book, despite the title. It's a cozy mystery set on a college campus in New York City. The story revolves around a now-grown pop singer, Heather Wells, who's trying to make a go in life after her singing career ended. This murder was much easier to solve pretty early on, but Heather is a fun character who is easy to relate to. It looks like there may be more books in this series too which I think would be worth a look.

I started The Something That Happened in Pepperville but have set it aside. I'm all for quirky towns and quirky characters, but this one goes to extremes. Not a character or place was introduced that didn't have some weird foible. I need at least a bit of normalcy in there somewhere. Now I'm on to Frankly My Dear I'm Dead. Not far enough to make comments but chapter one was good. Oh, that is when I'm not playing word games. Amazon released 2 word games for Kindle this week which I'm finding WAY too addicting.

Sewing...I'm once again making bags for my Etsy shop and hope to get them listed in the next month or so. They still need buttons and photos taken, but I'm getting closer. I also just sewed the cutest little pair of house slippers.

The pattern comes from Amy Karol (Mail order #9). The sizes included are S (5-6), M (7-8) and L (9-10). I wear a size 8 1/2 shoe so I fall right in the middle. I tried the medium, but it's too small. Will try the large next time. I also used polar fleece for the soles rather than the cotton duck/canvas she calls for. So much cushier. The top fabric is a vintage cotton found at Shupp's Grove a few weeks back. These are perfect summer slippers.

I'm back to knitting. I finished the Multnomah shawl.

Used about 1 1/2 balls for 100purewool lace weight held double on US 5 needles. I did 13 lace repeats rather than 10. I could have done more for a larger shawl, but I just wanted it to be done. The pattern is easy and it's a cute little shawlette. I'm not crazy about the garter stitch middle. If I were to knit it again I'd probably do stockinette stitch.

I've been longing for a denim sweater since I first heard about the yarn (indigo dyed cotton yarn that fades and shrinks like denim jeans). There are several companies that produce denim yarn. When Elann announced a bag sale of True Blue denim yarn, I jumped at the chance to get a sweaters-worth for under $40. The color is medium blue and I bought 2 bags of the same dye lot. I found the dye to be very inconsistent throughout the bags though. Some balls are much lighter than others. They evened out a bit in the wash, but I can still see where I changed balls.

I designed the pattern myself using Knitwear. Knit on Bond USM, keyplate 1, ribbing handknit on US 4 needles, 13 balls of Elle True Blue Denim yarn. Took only 5 days to complete (over the course of 3 weekends, working only a few hours at a time). I love my sweater machine for plain sweaters! After washing the sweater is so incredibly soft and light. I've got 7 balls left and am debating ordering another bag to make a sweater for C as well. I'm not really into matchy/matchy couples, but we could just make a point not to wear them at the same time! :)

Not even trying anymore

2010-07-09T20:23:00.000-04:00

Remember way back in December when I talked about going on a yarn diet? How I was going to be good and knit from stash and not just buy yarn for the sake of buying yarn? Yeah, lets just try to forget that lofty goal. I've failed AGAIN. And with the whole not actually knitting thing going on, I feel strangely compelled to buy yarn so at least something is happening in my fiber world. It's a sickness, I know.

So here's the current fail. A week or so ago I got a ding on Ravelry that my name was mentioned on the Knitter's Brewing Company group. So I clicked over to see why. Lo and behold, I won their monthly drawing for a free skein of yarn. Sweet! I had only just discovered the site a week or two before that and signed up for the drawing on a whim. Lucky me! The indy dyer behind KBC, Wendy, uses a micro-brewery theme for her collection and has based all her yarns on cocktails. She has multi-color skeins as well as semi-solids. All sock yarns (75% superwash wool/25% nylon). I couldn't narrow my decision down to just one color and since she runs sales every Thursday (and this just happened to be a Thursday) I went ahead and ordered 2 skeins along with my freebie. The yarn arrived super quick, and adorably packaged.

Each skein is wrapped in tissue paper and nestled into its own foil stamped bag. I need to get pictures of the yarns unwrapped so you can see their gorgeousness, but there was a bit of an accident (involving a cat with a hairball, 'nuf said) so one of the yarns need to be washed (yuck) so no glamor shots just yet. The colors are lovely. The blue is called "Old Fashioned" and the grey is "Greyhound". These are both semi solids with subtle variations in tone. The pink multi is "Cabernet Harvest". It was much more pink in the skein than I had anticipated. However, when I unfurled the hank I discovered rich burgundys and dark olive greens hiding. Wendy includes a free pattern with each skein of yarn you buy. I chose Stashbuster and With a Twist. I also picked up a Knit Happy notepad which contains little post it notes, post it arrows and a notepad. Can't wait to get to knit some of this up!!

Tuesday, July 5, 2010 5:45 pm

2010-07-05T17:47:00.000-04:00

Yeah, right. That reads 104. No joke. Almost 6 o'clock in the evening and it's over 100 degrees.

More sewing

2010-07-05T13:47:00.000-04:00

This weekend's post was supposed to be all about Tour de Fleece (a spinning challenge that coincides with the bicycling race, Tour de France). A month or so back I signed up with the Knit Girllls team with a goal of spinning 10 minutes a day during the tour. Alas, I'm still sidelined by my achy hands so I'm going to bow out before I even start. If you are interested in more information on TdF, check out the official group on Ravelry.

On the plus side, I am starting to notice improvements in my hands. My left wrist is doing much better and only gives me problems occasionally. I was even able to do some weight training this week, still no push ups though. My right thumb still hurts but it too is showing signs of improvement. The last few nights I've been putting a hot pack on it rather than ice and I'm feeling quite a bit better. I've been able to knit a bit, maybe 30 minutes each day since Friday. I wear a support on my left hand and have my right thumb wrapped so I remember not to use it. I'm hopefully I can avoid the trip to the chiropractor if improvement continues.

So instead of knitting, I've been doing tons of sewing. Last weekend I sewed 2 bags with some of the fabric from Burkholders (and some stash fabric). The first is a purse from the fabulous One Yard Wonders book.

This is the Flouncy Bag. It's much smaller than the Namaste bag I've been carrying, which took some getting used to. But the lighter weight and cotton fabric make it much more summer friendly.

Also from this book I made the Better than a Box cat bed.

This was a bit fiddley to sew, but the results are very well loved by the feline population of our home. I stuffed the bed with the leftover wool batting and some random wool leftovers I had laying around.

Next up is a little tote bag that's made using 3 fat quarters of fabric.

I found the pattern online, but am not linking it because the pattern has issues. The designer must have larger fat quarters than I can get (you know those things are never cut square and you rarely get the 18x22" you're supposed to) because I couldn't get the pieces she calls for from my FQs. So I just used her basic idea and came up with my own bag.

The fabrics are reversed from one side to the next. It's a perfect little lunch bag size.

Last up is a nearly instant sundress. JoAnn Fabric had this cheater fabric on sale this weekend.The top is shirred with elastic and the bottom is a full skirt.

For $9 I got enough fabric for a dress and ribbon to use for straps. All you do is sew up the 2 cut edges, add straps and you are done! You could cut the bottom down and hem it if you wanted a shorter dress. But since this is strictly for around-the-house-wear for me, the selvage finished edge is just fine for now.

How to Sew a Button

2010-06-30T20:48:00.000-04:00

I just finished up the book How to Sew a Button by Erin Bried. This quaint little book serves up the wisdom of our grandmothers in easy to follow steps. The tips range from the useful for everyone...(how to sew a button, how to grocery shop and how to spring clean) to the useful for those of us who yearn to be more like our grandmothers...(how to roast a chicken, how to hang a wash line and how to play crazy 8s). There's practical tips about budgeting and saving. Cooking, cleaning and sewing tips abound. There's stuff you'd never think to find in a how to book, like how to make friends with the neighbors or how to greet your honey after a hard day (lest you feminists balk, she's quick to point out this tip goes both ways). Everything is presented with a light heart and charming attitude. Each tip starts out with a pithy comment from "the grandmothers" who contributed to the book. There a kitschy, retro drawings scattered throughout the book as well. All in all an entertaining but educational read. Downside, makes me REALLY miss my grandmas!

Squee!!!

2010-06-29T21:18:00.000-04:00

Zero knitting

2010-06-26T11:49:00.003-04:00

My hands are rebelling against me and I'm unable to knit. I've not knit a stitch in almost 7 days which is probably some kind of record since I've taken up the hobby. The problems I'm having were probably brought on by the new exercise routines I've been following lately, but knitting definitely aggravates the pain so it's off limits for now.

Instead I've been reading. I'm still on the aromatherapy kick and am working my way through a pile of books on the subject. Last week I finished the Aromatherapy Bible. The book is small in dimension but still nearly 400 pages. It is one of the best references I've read on aromatherapy. The topics are concise but thorough. The book covers various techniques for using aromatherapy, has a large essential oil reference section and plenty of recipes. I foresee turning to this book often.

I'm about half way through Essential Aromatherapy (the 1995 edition). This book is somewhat dated (there's a reference to Princess Diana using aromatherapy!) But the principles are still good. There are handy reference tables in various configurations making it easy to search for oils by name or by condition you wish to address. This too will be a book I keep on the shelf, but if you are looking to get a copy for yourself, perhaps consider the updated version.

On my Kindle I'm still reading Mossy Creek. This book is delightful. A perfect summer read. Each chapter introduces a new citizen of Mossy Creek and tells a story about them and their involvement in the town. The tales build on each other very subtly with previous characters showing up in the sidelines here and there. The characters are funny and smart and the stories are engaging. I'm sure I'll be picking up more books from this series as time goes on.

C and I made our first trek to Shupp's Grove this morning. We got there early, right when they opened, and found many vendors still closed. This flea market is very laid back compared to most where it's all a hustle and bustle. Located in what appears to be an old wooded campground, Shupp's Grove is a cool, dipped in nature oasis. The folks there are friendly. Bargains abound and we usually find something to spark our interest. I picked up an old Corning dish to use as a bird bath and C found some old comics. On the way home we found Burkholder's fabric store was open and stopped in to have a look around. Oh wow, what a store! There are 3 huge rooms STUFFED with fabric.

I picked up 2 one yard cuts of some vintage looking fabrics and a slew of fat quarters (you can get 20 fq for $25, that's half price!) Now I really have no idea what I'll do with 25 fat quarters, but since I'm not knitting at the moment, this will at least give me something crafty to play with!

The 5 yard quilt

2010-06-20T09:22:00.000-04:00

Since I took up knitting, quilting has taken a bit of a back seat. I still love quilts and piecing tops, but I'm strictly a machine sewer and just don't find myself wanting to spend time squirreled away in my sewing room. Plus my craft/sewing room is tiny making the quilting of quilts an exercise in fabric gymnastics, constantly tucking and fluffing and stuffing and wrangling the quilt around my sewing table and into the machine. Normally I stick to smallish quilts, generally afghan size, which are somewhat manageable. But 2 years ago at the Quilt Odyssey in Hershey I fell in love with a 5 Yard Quilt Kit from Bolines and knew I had to have it for our spare room's twin bed. The kits are great. You get 5 yards of coordinating fabric and 3 patterns to make a twin size quilt top. You supply your own batting, backing and binding. The top has been pieced for quite some time it's just been waiting for me to quilt it. So this weekend I took advantage of a day off and pleasantly cool morning temperatures and I soldiered through and got it quilted. I had started trying to individually quilt the large blocks, but this was proving near impossible with my set up. In the end, i just straight line quilted between the major blocks. I'll go back at some point and do some additional quilting in between, just to prevent the batting from shifting if it needs to be washed.

I adore the old-timey look of these fabrics. Feels very colonial to me. I intend to redo the room around the quilt. As you can see, the room needs a redo. The walls are do for paint this year and I'm leaning towards a rich, chocolate suede brown. Curtains will perhaps be navy or I'd love to find that brown floral from the quilt and make curtains with it. But seeing that the fabrics are a number of years old, this probably won't happen. I used wool batting for a truly decadent feel. The cost was a bit more than good cotton batting, but I do recommend it for a special project. Oh, and cats ADORE it too. It's been a long time coming, but I'm thrilled to bits with this quilt.

Swatching for Iona

2010-06-06T14:38:00.000-04:00

I found a lovely seller on Ebay who specializes in chenille yarns. She carries a bulky cotton chenille that seems comparable to Rowan Chunky Chenille, so I purchased one of her four packs to do some test knitting. The yarn arrived super fast. (I give Chenille Shack highest marks for customer service. If you need chenille yarn, this is the place to go!) I wanted to give the yarn a thorough test with the pattern so rather than doing a swatch, I decided to just cast on a sleeve as written for Iona. This way I could test the color work cuff as well as the cable section.

At first I found the chenille hard on my hands. After an hour or so of solid knitting, my hands were aching. Chenille has no stretch or give like plied yarns do because of its construction and cotton itself is inelastic as well. Furthermore, you're knitting with bulky yarn (eh, maybe closer to heavy worsted) on US 5 and 7 needles, that's a somewhat firm gauge. The next day I tried again, loosening my tension a bit and I did not experience the hand fatigue. I'm getting stitch gauge, spot on (4 st/inch) but my row gauge is off (5 row/inch instead of 6). This could be a bit problematic because of the nature of the cable motif (the whole thing needs to fit in a specific amount of space. Since I'm getting fewer rows than called for, the motif will take up more space.) There's enough background I think I could adjust though.

The question is if I like the yarn enough to do a whole sweater with it. Here's what the swatch looks like so far.

The yarn is moderately soft, but I've heard it softens considerably upon washing. It feels a bit heavy although it is cotton. The drape is ok and I imagine will only improve with washing. My issue is the reverse stockinette (the part above the checkerboard).

That is how the sweater is designed, with the "wrong" side of the stitch to the front. I've just never been a fan of reverse stockinette. It makes me feel like my sweater is inside out. And with chenille yarn it feels even more so. I'm not going to rush to a decision. Having picked up some yarn to test the pattern has scratched the Iona itch for now and I'm satisfied to think about it for awhile before making a final decision. I think the next time I place a Knit Picks order I'll pick up 2 balls of Comfy bulky and see how that looks. If I feel the same ways about the ugliness of reverse stockinette then this pattern may be out of the queue.

There's still plenty of other knitting going on. I'm working on a pair of socks in that Bluetopia BFL I picked up from Liberty during her sale.

This is the Tea Party color way (the picture is not doing it justice) and the pattern is called "Purl When Ready" from the Big Book of Socks. It's mostly a plain vanilla sock with a few purl stitches thrown in randomly for interest.

I'm also working on a Featherweight Cardigan by Hannah Fettig.

The pattern calls for laceweight yarn, but I wanted a slightly more substantial yet still lightweight sweater so I'm using Knit Picks Comfy fingering weight yarn. It's a super easy knit and I am loving the fabric it's producing. Knitting sock yarn on US 6 (4mm) needles produces such a fabulous drape. The sweater feels like the softest tee shirt. It is moving along at a pretty decent clip and I would hope to be able to wear it this season yet.

The Multnomah shawl, Bitterroot shawl and Sleepy Hollow socks all get a few rows knitted on them each week, but there's no visible progress there. I enjoy having this variety of projects (from mindless to challenging) at hand to suit my mood at the time.

Lastly, the Wollmeise count is up to 4 and holding. After I received my first order, I was around for another Saturday update and managed to grab a Kunterbunt and a Gemischt small grab bags in Twin (and 80/20 merino/nylon blend sock yarn). The intention was for them to go to Jen since at that time she still didn't have any WM. But as it turned out, by the time they came, she had managed to order 6 skeins for herself (which is producing much frustration do to a shipping problem, but that's another story). When the 4 skeins arrived, I found the Gemischt was the exact same colors I got in my first order a few weeks prior. Jen happily took those 2. She was nice enough to let me keep the Kunterbunt set.

So here's my current inventory.

My Old Blue Jeans, Campari Orange and 2 Versuchskaninchen. Jen is leaving me in the dust. She's already balled her's up and has started knitting socks! I still can not bear to unwrap them. In fact they still live in their original bag. I still want to get a big Kunterbunt or maybe Gemischt bag one of these days. But there seems to be a lot of duplicate yarns being shipped right now and I'm really hoping for a variety. So I'm holding off for at least a month or two before trying for more.

Last month's reading

2010-06-02T21:41:00.000-04:00

I finished up Sweater Quest, in which the author writes about her "quest" to knit an Alice Starmore sweater. The book started out well, as many knitting projects do. There's all the excitement of deciding you want to knit something, the adventure of finding the materials (in this case a true adventure since the book containing the pattern and the yarns called for in the pattern are no longer being produced) and the joy of casting on. But after it gets going, the boredom and tedium set in. When knitting a fair isle sweater in a fine gauge, no matter how how intricate the pattern may look in the end, you are essentially just making stitch after stitch after stitch, thousands of times. You do need to keep track of which color stitch to make, but even so, there's only 2 colors in the row, not exactly rocket surgery. The book suffers the same monotonous cadence. Once it gets past the fun stuff, the book becomes page after page after page of the same questions being asked of various knitters, most of whom have very similar points of view. Perhaps because all the interviewees were knitters who's blogs I read and have heard the exact same answers and stories before, this was exceptionally boring. I stuck with it till the end because I wanted to see if she would finish the sweater and how it turned out. The answer is given, of course, but even that I found disappointing. I had high hopes for the book. I love knitting. I love AS. But this one just didn't come together. If you want a good knitting read for summer, read Rachael's How to Knit a Love Song and give this one a skip.

I've set Dead Witch Walking aside for the moment. Ah yes, another reason to love my Kindle. So easy to skip between multiple books without losing my place or having to lug them all around! Anyway, DWW is very good, but it's moving too slow for me. I'll come back to it at some point, but for now I have a taste for something lighthearted. So it's on to Mossy Creek. I'm only about a fifth of the way in but am finding it delightful so far. Another southern charmer in the vein of the Biggie Weatherford books.

I caved and picked up another Alice Starmore book in the midst of Sweater Quest. This time The Celtic Collection. Where Fisherman's Sweaters is devoted mostly to cable and textured stitch patterns, Celtic Collection contains more Fair Isle designs (although there's still a good dose of texture in here as well). Lismore (you can see a scan of the sweater photo here) is one Fair Isle design I may someday endeavor to tackle. Absolutely stunning. The cabled sweaters call most strongly to me. Iona is high on my queue. (See it here, second picture). The yarn called for is, as expected, discontinued. It would have been cost prohibitive anyway, so I'm looking for an alternative. The original is chenille yarn, a yarn with a dubious reputation for being unpleasant to knit with. I've ordered a small amount of a similar cotton chenille to do some test swatching before committing to a sweater's worth. Other options include Knit Pick's Comfy Bulky which would have a much different look but would, I still think, look stunning. Wool is always an option too, but I'm leaning towards a cotton since the yarn is bulky weight and I'd like to wear the sweater more than one day a year. More on my little Starmore journey in future months.

The kitchen witch in me

2010-05-30T13:05:00.000-04:00

I have long been into homemade bath and body products. I've been making my own beauty products off and on since high school and though there are many commercial products I use and like, there's just something special about the homemade. I know exactly what is in what I'm putting on my skin and can pronounce and recognize each ingredient. Plus the act of creating these potions speaks to my inner alchemist. Using pure essential oils provides aromatherapy as well as skin healing properties.

The last few months has seen a resurgence in my interest in homemade skin care. I discovered fabulous cold cream on Etsy from Cataphract. I've not been able to duplicate her product, but I've discovered I can make a mighty fine night cream for myself in the process of trying. A mention of natural deodorant on the now defunct Lime and Violet podcast got me investigating recipes for that as well. I found it is super simple to make and works wonderfully. Now that our weather is starting to creep into the 80s and 90s we'll see how well natural holds up to the heat!

My latest adventure in homemade natural is trying to create some infused oils. Our lavender is blooming in abundance and smells divine. I decided to try two blends...

The first jar is stuffed full with lavender buds and mint leaves topped with olive oil. The second is lavender and rose petals with sunflower oil. The jars will need to sit in a dark place for several months to infuse the oil with the flowers' scents. I started the lavender/mint oil a week or two ago and the oil is already starting to absorb the scent. I'm very much looking forward to having these infused oils next fall and winter to (hopefully) create some great smelling soaps and lotions!

One word

2010-05-10T21:23:00.000-04:00

Wollmeise

You nonknitters might as well stop reading now. By the end of this post you'll be convinced I'm a raving lunatic. But, you knitters out there know what I'm talking about. This much ballyhooed yarn is pretty darn difficult to come by. It's a German yarn sold almost exclusively by the dyer (although I understand Loopy Ewe does carry it occasionally). Claudia usually stocks her shop once or twice a week and stock sells out in minutes. MINUTES I say. I've known of the yarn for months. But the extreme difficulty in obtaining it from the source and generally astronomical prices being charged on Ebay have kept my interest marginal. About a month ago, I decided to start watching for site updates. I downloaded a tool for Firefox that monitors websites for you and notifies you whenever they update. The few times I was actually in the vicinity of my computer when an update went up, I wasn't able to get an order off in time. That was until about 10 days ago. May 1st must have been my lucky day because I managed to score a 2 skein grab bag, known as We're Different. I really had no idea what I was ordering. The color names are mostly German and the updates go so very fast it's hard to figure out what's what. So I rather blindly ordered a 2 skein We're Different Gemischt. After ordering I joined the Ravelry group of Wollmeiseholics and did some research. I discovered that Gemischt bags include yarns of complimentary colors (either 2 or 5 skeins, depending which size you order). There are also grab bags known as Kunterbunt which will included unmatched colors, true grab bags. Grab bags are also available in individual colors if you are so inclined. All the We're Different grab bags are "Surprise-Bags with our rebels (colours that don't correspond to the photo exactly), wallflower (skeins that were put aside as standby for previous online updates) and guinea pigs (test-dyes)." Since I love surprise, this is perfect for me.

My package arrived today. I was thrilled to bits. Here's what was in the package.

The yarns were packed inside a delightfully illustrated paperbag. The front side looks like knitted fabric and the back side has English / German knitting translations. There was a free scarf pattern and a bag of German gummy bears.

The yarn is phenomenal. The hype? Totally not hype. It's all true. The color is gorgeous. It defies photographing, but trust me, it's outstanding. Someday I may be able to unwrap these skeins and actually knit something with this. For now, I just want to stare at it. To pet it. To put it in a safe where no one can touch it but me.

2010 garden starting line

2010-04-25T15:25:00.000-04:00

We've had some nice weather lately and we've started getting the garden in. I'm changing the layout quite a bit from what we did last year. This year the onions are going in the side bed.

The eggplant remain at the far end and in the little space between I've planted out the Tom Thumb cherry tomatoes I started from seed. The seedlings suffered a dose of stress when I moved them out to the garage to harden off and the same week we were hit with 80 degree temperatures. They got a bit fried in the sunny window. I've since repotted them and moved them to my patio where they seem to be reviving. At least there's some new growth coming out above the withered leaves. Fingers crossed they pull through. The onion seedling also don't seem to be fairing well after being transplanted. I'm having the best luck with the onions sets I've planted, but they don't come in nearly the variety you can get in seeds or plants. Since this was my first year trying onion seeds I'll be keeping an eye on them to see how they turn out in the end.

The big bed is also very different.

We've planted the tomatoes and peppers around the perimeter. In the middle are squash, broccoli and cucumbers. I've used old cat litter jugs with the tops and bottoms removed to protect the broccoli from the cruciforous loving bunnies. Along the front edge I'm planting kohlrabi and radishes at 2 week intervals to extend the harvest. Next week I'll put out the okra seeds in the long bed that runs along the wall to the right of the big bed. This is my favorite part of gardening. I love getting the plants in with all their promise of yummy goodness to come.

I was the lucky winner of a Barnes and Noble gift certificate recently and expanded my library with these lovely books

First up is Sweater Quest about a woman's quest to knit an Alice Starmore fair isle sweater. For the uninitiated, AS has written some of the most stunning and highly sought after patterns in the knitting world. Her books are mostly out of print and some frequently sell in the hundreds of dollars range. I'm excited to read Adrienne's account of knitting one of these masterpieces.

Next is How to Sew A Button, a delightful little book full of grandma's wisdom.

Rounding out the foursome are two cozy mysteries...Knit One, Kill Two and Town in a Blueberry Jam. Somehow I found I have the second in Maggie Sefton's series, but I really prefer to start at the beginning in a series. Currently I'm finishing up Grime and Punishment which was the April cozy selection in the Ravelry Whodunit? group. It's a good little mystery, nothing too shocking or gory. Next up for the group is Crewel World which sounds great. But I'm undecided if I'll read it with so many other books already in line!

I decided to treat myself to a few knitting books as well.

With a 50% off coupon at Micheal's I snagged Cookie A's Sock Innovation. And I picked up one of the few attainable Starmore books, Fisherman's Sweaters, from Amazon's used books options for $10. Both of these books are mainly eye candy and inspiration. The patterns are to die for. Drool worthy. Stunning. I could go on and on. I will someday knit a Starmore. Likely one of her cabled sweaters and not a fair isle. And I will certainly knit more Cookie A socks (I've already done her Monkey socks twice). For now I'll just enjoy the view.

Fail

2010-04-09T17:58:00.000-04:00

Guess I should have kept my mouth shut last week when I said I had been good about not buying yarn. Oops.

Well, Liberty's Yarns is running a 35% off sale on all her stuff for the month of April. That's just way too good to pass up. I got two skeins of her Bluetopia (BFL) Sock yarn.

The first is Tea Party. Yummy shades of nearly every color of the muted rainbow. I can not wait to see how this will knit up!

The second skein is Halloween. I loved this colorway the first time I way it back in the fall in roving form, but it was sold out then. Classic Halloween colors of orange, black, purple and green. Gorgeous, saturated, and dark. The yarn itself looks to be a fine fingering weight with a tight twist. It is soft and lusterous. Should make absolutely stunning socks.

More book and knitting talk

2010-03-27T20:37:00.016-04:00

I finished up the Biggie book I was reading, Biggie and the Fricasseed Fat Man (Biggie Weatherford). Delightful. I highly recommend this series if you are looking for lighthearted reading. The nice thing about this series is you can jump in on any book and not be lost. There are references to previous books, but none so much that it detracts from the current story. Now I'm reading Rachael Herron's first book, How to Knit a Love Song: A Cypress Hollow Yarn. I heard about the book on Marie Irshad's Knit Cast podcast and thought it sounded pretty good. It's a knitting romance. I'm not generally a fan of romance books, but it's got knitting! How bad can it be? Actually, so far it's pretty darn good. I'm only a few chapters in. The young heroine has just inherited a cottage from a sweet old knitting lady (very reminiscent of Elizabeth Zimmermann). The downside is that this cottage is located smack in the middle of a sheep ranch the woman owned and willed to her nephew, a set-in-his-ways cowboy. And so the fun begins. The writing is good. Rachael paints a lovely, vivid picture without being ponderous. The pace is good and I'm definitely looking forward to an afternoon of reading.

I had a wonderful discovery this week for the Kindle. Knitcircus online knitting magazine has gone free and digital. The magazine can be read online or downloaded as a PDF. They even allow you to print the magazine out if you wish. Fantastic! I was absolutely delighted to download the PDF and copy it to my Kindle. The font is a tad small, but still readable. Patterns are NOT included in the free version of the magazine. There is a flat fee to purchase the entire pattern pack for the issue. I'm happy with the advent of online knitting magazines, even happier to find one that allows download to a reader so I'm not stuck at my computer desk to read it. There are various modalities of pattern distribution. Knitty is totally free, Knitcircus is one price for all the issue's patterns and Twist Collective you buy each pattern individually.

Knitting this week has mostly been on the Kertzer Yoked Cardigan. This has been an interesting pattern to knit. You knit the base of the cardi in pieces to the underarm then join them and knit the yoke as one piece. There's also an interesting method of making the pockets where you knit the pocket lining and keep it on a holder. When you come to the pocket placement on the fronts, you make rapid increases which create a little pouch. At the top of the pocket, you lap the outermost pocket stitches over the center stitches creating pleats. You work a few rows of edging and bind off the pocket stitches then attach the lining on the next row. It's terribly easy and creates an adorable pocket.

I finished a pair of vanilla socks in some yarn I had purchased last year on Ebay, JL Yarns Salvia. The yarn was quite inexpensive so I figured I'd give it a try. It is a very fine fingering weight yarn. I knit the socks on US 1 needles but will probably knit the next pair on US 0, if I get around to knitting the second pair! These seemed to take forever. I guess because of the fineness of the yarn. And there was nothing compelling about the yarn. Just plain, basic yarn. The only other socks I've got going at the moment are the 6ply self patterning socks, for when I need totally brainless knitting. Next up in my sock queue are the Sleepy Hollow socks using some of my own hand dyed yarn. Just have to get the yarn wound up.

I'm still working on the Bitterroot shawl from Knitty. The pattern is starting to show now, although it's difficult to see in the picture since it's not blocked. I also started a Multnomah shawl. The eagle eyed among you will recognize the yarn from last summer's stole. I love the yarn, love knitting with the yarn. But stoles...not so much loving knitting them. Too much like overgrown scarves or undersized blankets. WAY too much boring knitting. At least with a triangle shawl each row is a little different. Besides, I really wanted to knit Multnomah and knew this yarn would be perfect. It is 100purewool lace weight in the color Nicanor held double.

Although I've manged to stick to not buying yarn, I've failed on the sniffies. I purchased some samples from For Strange Women and am smitten. Her scents are all natural, no fragrance oils, just natural and essential oils. The scents are incredibly complex. They smell totally different on my skin than in the bottle. They are rich and pure, nothing cloying and artificial like in some perfume oils. I decided to treat myself to a full bottle of Decadence and Debauchery, although the other 2 I tried, Winter Kitty and Moss & Ivy were equally tempting.

Ooo shiney!

2010-03-14T09:46:00.004-04:00

Another finished object this week. The Shake the Barley mitts are done.I love them alot. Of course, now it's too warm to wear them, but they'll be all ready for next fall. I don't think I have enough of the Patons Classic Merino left to make the matching hat. I could possibly do it in reverse, with the body in burgundy and the cuff in cream. But I don't think I'd like that. I've got other cream yarns in stash so I should be able to find something that will work.

Working on the cabled mitts and a mention on a Knitmore Girls podcast reminded me of a cable needle I've been lusting after for some time now. I don't remember when I first heard about Leslie Wind's cable needles, but when I saw them I knew I had to have one someday. She dubbs them "tewelry". Functional knitting tools that are pretty enough to be jewelry. They are a bit spendy for a cable needle when you consider you can get a pack of 3 Clover cable needles for under $3. However, I like a bit of luxury here and there when I can swing it and that little bit of something special adds a lot of pleasure to my knitting time. So I finally broke down and treated myself to one (one of the small advantages of not buying yarn, you can spend the money on cool tools!)I went with the sheep design. It arrived about a week after I ordered it. As expected, it is gorgeous. The needle came with it's own little satin pouch that zips shut along with a polishing cloth to keep it looking great. The sheep is sterling silver and the cable needle is brass. It comes attached to an adjustable cord necklace so you can wear it around your neck. I found this just got in the way, especially on back cables, so I removed the cord. Using the needle took a little getting used to. I'm used to a straight cable needle (Brittany's are my favorite) where you can slip the stitches on to the needle from right to left and then knit them off the other end. With this needle, you have to slip the stitches to the needle from left to right which is a bit more difficult for me since I knit rather tightly. The needle is heavy enough to pull the stitches out of the way while you work the cable. After I work the cable I loop the needle around the middle finger on my left hand so it's ready for the next turn. It is by far the handiest needle in that respect; I don't have to weave it into my work or hold it in my mouth or drop it as mostly happens with my straight needle. I don't think this may be the cable needle for everyone. But if you are a bit experienced with cabling and looking for a special treat, I do recommend it. (Yes, that's the Fylingdales sweater in the background. Maybe this sweet cable needle will give me the push to finish it!)

I didn't get much reading done this week. I gave up on Aunt Dimity Snowbound. I couldn't get into it. I loved the first book and have only read one more in the series so far. Maybe it's because I read it out of order but I didn't care for it nearly as much as the first. I think I'll go back and try to read them in order before I try to read the later books.

I've instead started Biggie and the Fricasseed Fat Man. I LOVE the Biggie books. I've read the first two already and this is third in the series with 3 more after this one. The books center around Biggie Weatherford and her grandson JR, told from JR's point of view. They are set in Texas and are written with a heavy Texas accent. The characters are delightfully quirky. The stories are rather absurd and unlikely, but totally fun nonetheless.

Read an E-Book week

2010-03-07T20:37:00.002-05:00

March 7 thru 13 is "Read an E-Book Week". Check out the website lots of ebook promotions. Books on the Knob also has a list of promotions (I think they are pretty much the same list). I've only just started exploring and already found some new free books.

Finally, some pictures!

2010-03-07T13:54:00.004-05:00

Skully is finished and turned out gorgeous. I used the modified drop-shoulder sweater from Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater patterns rather than the pattern in Stitch n Bitch. I wasn't at all crazy about the shape of the original sweater. But I'm delighted with how mine turned out. The yarn is wonderfully cozy (Kraemer Yarns Victor, dyed by me in Jacquard Gunmetal).

This week I've mostly been knitting on the Shake the Barley mitts from Fiddle Knits. I LOVE these mitts! I'm using the left over Wool of the Andes from my Heroine jacket for the cuffs and Patons Classic Merino for the body. The pattern is well written and these are a fast easy knit. There's a matching hat pattern that I'll probably end up purchasing and knitting as well.

Here's the finished Chasm handspun.I've yet to take the wpi count and figure yardage. It's definitely not fingering weight. Possibly sport weight or DK. No plans for this just yet.

I spent this morning potting up some of my seedlings. I moved the cherry tomatoes and candy onions into larger pots. I found repotting the onions a bit challenging so I left the others in the original flats. I thinned out the weak and small seedlings and added a bit more soil. They've got a ways to go before they'll be sturdy enough to get into the garden. Now that the snow is melted off the garden I'm starting to get excited for spring. Dad and I had a lengthy discussion the other day about what we hope to do with our respective gardens. Planning is half the fun!!

I finished reading The Cat, the Quilt and the Corpse early this week (did you see Leann posted a comment last week! How awesome is that?!) This week I read a bunch of previews and finally settled on Dead Witch Walking. Delightful so far. I've been listening to the Canterville Ghost which is also delightful. I had no idea something that old could be that hilarious. I'm woefully unread when it comes to classic literature. I considered the required reading in high school torturous (can you say Grapes of Wrath?) But now that I'm older and not under the instant joy-killer of "required to read" and with so many classics available now for free in Kindle and audio (via Librivox), I'm finding quite a lot that I enjoy. I find it particularly satisfying to listen to classics read by someone else. It's often easier for me to process difficult vocabulary hearing it rather than trying to read it.

I nearly broke the stash diet this week. With the weather just starting to hint at the possibility of maybe giving us spring one day, I'm hankering to knit a cotton cardi. I added and deleted sweater quantities of yarn to my virtual shopping basket at least 4 times this week. But in the end, I managed to walk away. I pulled out the Caron Simply Soft I reclaimed from a previous project that didn't work out and cast on the Yoked Cardigan from Kertzer. Although it's not the cotton I had my heart set on, this yarn will still make a fine spring cardigan.

Speaking of reclaimed yarn, it looks like I'll be reclaiming the yarn from the February Lady sweater I knit last winter/spring. As I mentioned in the original post when I finished the sweater, I knit the piece too long and the lace also stretches A LOT. It's too the point now where it hangs almost to my knees. Plus I've lost weight and it's too big at the top now too. It looks like a potato sack on me. The yarn is too pretty to be wasted so I'll be working on unpicking the ends and then ripping back the yarn as time permits. I'm fairly sure I'll knit another FLS since I do love the sweater. But it will be in a smaller size and with far fewer repeats! For anyone who hasn't caught on, yes, I am very much a process knitter. I have no reservations about ripping out a sweater I spent weeks knitting!

Activity whirlwind

2010-02-28T15:48:00.003-05:00

With tax season in full swing and us experiencing a snowier than usual winter, I've found myself spending every spare minute knitting, reading or spinning. I'm in love with all the projects I'm working on too which contributes to the desire to always have something in my hands.

Reading: On the Kindle, I finished Snow Ball and have moved on to The Cat, the Quilt and the Corpse by Leann Sweeney. I've read a few of her Abby Rose mysteries and enjoyed them quite a lot. This book seemed right up my alley, a cozy mystery centered around a cat loving quilter. It took me a good third of the book to really get into it, the main character comes off as a crazy cat lady a lot of the time, but once the murder investigation got going, the book picked up pace and is pretty good. On my nightstand I've got a Nancy Ahterton book, Snowbound. Literally only a page or two in, though. I've been so tired at night I don't think I've read a paragraph without falling asleep!

Spinning: Finished spinning and plying the Fat Cat merino in Chasm. I didn't get my spinning quite as even as I accomplished with the CMF BFL I spun last. Could be the difference in fiber, could be that I wasn't being quite as careful this time. I got to use the new Jumbo Flyer on my Minstrel to ply. What a joy. I was able to get the entire 4 ounces onto one bobbin with room to spare. Well, not quite 4. I ended up with a small bit of singles left on one bobbin and at least one layer of singles on the last bobbin. I hate when that happens. I did split the roving evenly by weight before I started. But as I said, my spinning didn't seem quite as even. I'm thinking that last bobbin may have been the one I spun at the higher ratio and thus was a bit finer than the other two. I think I might use that extra singles to practice navajo plying. Now I'm spinning the superwash merino I dyed the other weekend. It's interesting to see how the colors are coming out. I've decided I need to dye larger patches when dyeing roving. I dyed this similar to how I dye yarn, with relatively small areas of color. In roving, that's just not enough to make a patch of color. It will be interesting to see what the yarn looks like when it's all done.

Knitting: I've finished the knitting on Skully 2 and have the arms sewn in. I still need to sew the side seams, weave in the ends and knit on a neckband. I hate finishing work so it will probably languish for awhile now. Two pair of socks going, plain vanilla socks in Salvia yarn are in the home stretch. I'm halfway down the foot of the second sock. I've also got a pair of 6 ply socks going, just finished the ribbing of the second sock so I'm better than halfway done the pair. I'm also working on the Bitterroot shawl. Now that I'm on the 3rd chart I'm really starting to like the shawl. Lace is just so addicting to knit.

Unfortuneately all this activity has brought on a nasty case of tennis elbow. I'm having to slow down a bit and remember to take more frequent breaks. I've found keeping a pillow under my arm when knitting provides good support as well.

Learning to love ratios

2010-02-23T19:09:00.004-05:00

I've been spinning for a little over 2 years now and am finally starting to feel competent at it. Competent, not proficient. I've still got a lot to learn. But I'm getting there. Reading books, watching videos and just spinning all contribute to learning more.

Just about every yarn I've spun has been on the 1st (slowest) ratio. I've ventured occasionally to the 2nd ratio, but that's about as far as it went. Ratios control the number of times the flyer on the spinning wheel turns in relation to the number of times the drive wheel turns. On my Minstrel, I've got 4 ratios. On the slowest ratio, for every time the big wheel goes around once, the flyer turns 6 times applying six twists to the fiber. Each subsequently smaller whorl is a higher ratio, each applying a bit more twist than the previous ratio. So I've read this umpteen times. I get it. But I've never really tried it. I mostly spin worsted range yarns which don't require tons of twist and that slow ratio is ideal for that type of yarn.

But recently, I've been desiring to spin sock yarn. Sock yarn is thin. The thinner the yarn, the more twist it needs to hold together. I successfully spun the Crown Mountain BFL into sock yarn a few months back on the second ratio (8.5 to 1). To achieve the amount of twist necessary to hold the few fibers together to form the fine singles I was treadling 6 to 8 to sometimes even 10. This works, but is labor intensive and takes FOREVER.

I moved on to my next project, more sock yarn, and continued in this same manner. My singles are lovely but I was getting frustrated at how long it was taking. I've got so much fiber I want to spin! So when I got to the last third of this current roving, I decided to give the 12 to 1 ratio a try. <<<>>> The difference was immediate and amazing. I spun through that last third in maybe half or a third the time it took to do the other bobbins. I'm able to treadle only a few times per draw to achieve the correct twist. I feel enlightened and excited at the prospect of actually being able to spin up sock yarn at a respectable rate.

And to top it all off, I've still got one more ratio to go...can anyone say lace weight?!

All dressed up

2010-02-21T16:22:00.001-05:00

As further proof of how much I love my Kindle, I decided to spend my birthday money on dressing it up (thank you family for the fundage!) Although the white color of the Kindle is easy on the eyes I'm afraid it's going to end up getting dirty in no time. I've kept mine in a silicone skin, but discovered dirt was getting under the skin plus it was really ugly. Then someone on the Rav boards mentioned Decal Girl skins and I knew I had to have one. There are hundreds of cool designs over there. I went with Tree of Books.

The skin is made of vinyl and was pretty easy to apply without bubbles (unlike the screen protector which requires something in the line of a Level 4 clean room to prevent dust bubbles). The nice thing about the skin is it gives just a bit of grip - I find the naked Kindle to feel slick and am in fear of dropping it. Plus it's really pretty!

I also upgraded from my standard clip light to a Kandle. The old light worked ok but I found I had to adjust the arm often to get the light just right on the screen. Plus it was kind of bulky and I had to remove it to store my Kindle. The Kandle provides a nice even illumination across the screen and is very light and compact. I can leave it attached all the time so it's there when I need it but is unobtrusive when I don't.

Big snow

2010-02-14T09:47:00.006-05:00

I'm going to join many other east coast bloggers with my pictures from the big snow (aka snowpocalypse, aka snowmagedon). Two back to back snow storms this past week dumped in the neighborhood of 3 feet of snow on us. The first storm hit on Saturday February 6We ended up with around 20 inches of snow. Thankfully it was the light, fluffy variety and was fairly easy to shovel. Although this also meant it drifted pretty easily. But we dug out from that one and went about our business. Then Wednesday rolled around and dumped another 20 inches of snow on us.I went out mid afternoon to clear a spot to put out some birdseed and got a yardstick shot. It's showing 14 inches but hubby had shoveled the walks once in the morning already and there had been about 5 or 6 inches then. The snow did not stop until after 5. So we and all our neighbors were out in the dark shoveling snow. This snow as also pretty light, but since the existing piles of snow were already quite high it took much more effort to shovel. Once we made it to the garage C was able to use the snow blower to clear behind the garage and help the neighbors unbury their cars. Not that having our cars accessible did us any good since the Borough did a piss poor job clearing the roads. Granted, this was a difficult situation and I'm sure budgets are tight, but we did not see a plow or salt truck from Wednesday morning until Friday morning. Thursday the roads in town were solid packed snow and ice. Thankfully the sun shone on Thursday and Friday and the Borough trucks did get out Friday to salt and plow so the roads were much improved by Friday night. We still have giant mounds of snow at most intersections which I imagine will be here until spring! The weather folks are watching another potential storm for Monday and Tuesday. Forecasts are ranging from less than an inch to over a foot so I guess we'll just have to wait and see what we get. All I know is spring can not get here soon enough!

I've taken advantage of all this cold miserable weather to spend quality time with my Kindle. I'm reading Snow Ball at the moment. It's probably best described as a dark comedy. Enjoyable and engaging reading.

Jen sent me some fiber for my birthday last week. I mentioned I'd like to try my hand at dying fiber again (having been put off by my first rather disastrous attempt a few years back) and she'll happily obliged me with some superwash merino fiber. So while snowed in last Sunday I gave it a try. I followed the directions for hot pour dying in the Twisted Sisters sock book and here's the resultI'm still having trouble with the dye striking too fast and leaving white patches in the core, but the colors are deep, which I love, and the fiber is still lofty and uncompacted. I was careful not to handle the wet fiber much so there was only minor fiber disorientation. I'm excited to try spinning it! I only dyed a portion of the fiber so still have more to play with. I just got Gail Callahan's new book Hand Dyeing Yarn and Fleece in the mail yesterday. Although I haven't had a chance to sit down and read it yet at first glance it looks wonderful. Full report soon.

And finally....hope for springMy onion and tomato seedlings are sprouting, hooray! I've had some difficulty in the past starting seeds. Our house is small with poor natural light. I've got a nice big grow light, but the only place I have room to set it up is in the (unheated) basement. This year I invested in a seed germination heating mat. Boy has it made a difference. It feels only very slightly warm to the touch, but apparently that bottom heat must make a world of difference. The seedlings are thriving.

Kindle resources

2010-02-01T17:24:00.002-05:00

As previously mentioned, I luvs me my Kindle. And I like to feed it regularly. To be honest, it gets fed new books WAY faster than I'll ever be able to read them. But that's beside the point. With the dubious ebook price increase rumors flying around and increased competition from Apple's iPad, I'm always on the look out for free/cheap books to stock my library. Thankfully there are some great resources out there. I hope to get these into my sidebar one of these days, for now it's easier to put them in a post.

Even if you don't have a Kindle, you may want to check these sites out. You can read the books on your computer (with Kindle for PC) or iPhone (with the app). Plus, many of the free books are only free for a very limited time (some only for one day). If you even think you'll want to read it someday and might maybe possibly be considering a Kindle of your very own, get the book while it's free. (Just last week I preordered a book for free and the next day Amazon raised the price to $8.49. Because I ordered during the free window, I got it for free.) Even if you never read the book, you aren't out any money.

Ok, so here we go....

Kindle Nation Daily
Stephen Windwalker's blog for all things Kindle. He wrote an excellent book on using your Kindle (so worth the buck it costs). He often posts a few times a day with Kindle related news and free/cheap book listings.

Books on the Knob
Mostly the same free books listed on KND but without the news and tech talk. Also lists books for other ereaders (like Sony and Nook) and freebie online games.

Project Gutenberg
Source for free public domain books. Be sure to download the Magic Catalog to your Kindle. You can search from your Kindle and download ebooks directly to it. I've only scratched the surface of this service, but it does work. Magically.

Jungle Search
One thing I find immensely frustrating about Amazon's Kindle store is it is very difficult to search for books by price. Jungle Search allows you to search on umpteen different levels (price, subject, keyword, reviews) and takes you right to Amazon with the results.

Inkmesh
Another search engine that helps you find the best price across the web for ebooks. Search by title, author, keyword, whatever. You can narrow your search on many criteria as well...price, type of content (ebook, audiobook, etc), even by device.

Smashwords
I believe this site is mostly all indie published books. I've not checked it out much, but it looks like they've got a good selection of free/cheap books if you aren't looking for big name authors.

Fictionwise
This store sells books in all eBook formats so you have to be careful to get Kindle compatible books. They've made it a bit easier by opening a Kindle dedicated site, but it doesn't offer a wishlist and some of the other features the main site does, so I tend to stick to the main site. They have lots of features I love including a wishlist, user ratings for books, book length references and tons of discounts. If you sign up for the mailing list you get a weekly newsletter with new releases tailored to your interest and most every weekend there are discount coupons. You can also join their Buywise club for even bigger discounts. I've been very happy with this source.

Calibre
My final recommendation isn't a store or search engine. It is a software program to manage your ebook library and facilitate getting books onto your Kindle. If you get all your Kindle content from Amazon, this is probably unnecessary, but if you are like me and get content all over the place, Calibre is fantastic. You can take ebooks in any non-DRM restricted format and it will convert them to a Kindle friendly format and copy them to the device (via USB cable). I've done it with pdf files (no having to go through Amazon's conversion process) and prc files and it has worked flawlessly. It also has a news fetching utility so you can get newspapers and such without having to subscribe through Amazon (yes that means free). The trade off is your Kindle has to be connected to your computer and Calibre has to be running to download the news, whereas with the paid Amazon subscription it's delivered automatically via Whispernet. You can also grab single issues of newspapers, which is what I tend to do. Calibre also has a built in book reading utility so you can read your ebooks all from one reader. It's a pretty cool piece of software.

Another catching up post!

2010-01-30T10:40:00.007-05:00

Oh my, it has been forever since I posted! So much to catch up on.

The holidays were fantastic. We had such fun visiting with family and relaxing at home. It was wonderful having Christmas and New Year's both fall on weekends. We all enjoyed our gifts. I gifted myself with a Kindle and have thoroughly enjoyed it. I debated the purchase forever. Big price tags warrant such debates. I was really afraid I'd end up with buyer's remorse since I'm not as avid a reader as the rest of my family. However, I have not regretted the purchase for a second and highly recommend the Kindle for anyone who enjoys reading on any level.

I've been knitting quite a bit. I finished the Stonehenge handspun BFL socks.They may just be my favorite socks ever. So soft and warm and the colors are delicious. The fiber was Crown Mountain Farms BFL in Stonehenge (I used 4 ounces for the socks, 3 ply fingering weight). The pattern is Twilight from 2 at a Time Socks.

Nearly finished the first sleeve of Skully (front and back body are both done).Love the skull and crossbones, hated knitting it though. I don't think I'm cut out for intarsia. The stitches look awfully wobbly. I'm sure hoping once it's washed and fluffed a bit it'll even out. And I just noticed in posting this picture there's a mistake on the right arm of the crossbones that's going to need fixing. The second sleeve is going to be plain or perhaps I'll put a stripe or two of white around the upper arm. I like the idea of asymmetry.

I started another shawl. Bitterroot from the Winter 09 Knitty.I'm knitting it in Knit Picks Shadow laceweight yarn in Cattail Heather. I've only got a skein and a half of this so I may end up with more of a shawlette. I do have a KP gift certificate (thanks Jen!) so I'm covered if I decide I want a full shawl and need another skein.

Still plugging away on the Vanilla socks in Salvia yarn. Those are my purse knitting and since we didn't really go anywhere in January little has been done on them.

I started a pair of 6ply socks in Fortissima Socka fair isle yarn. This yarn has been in my stash forever. Thanks to the stash diet it's finally seeing the light of day.

Knitters with a weak heart may want to stop here. Remember this sweater?The one that the collar wouldn't lay flat on and gapped and sagged if I weren't standing still as a statue for a picture? Well here it is now.Shocking, I know. I frogged the whole thing. Even with washing the yarn is a bit wavy from being knit up but I'm sure it will knit into a fine sweater. I love the color and it is truly one of the nicest acrylic yarns I've used so I couldn't bear to just throw it out. I'm leaning towards Bantam.

Spinning, not much progress. Working on superwash merino for a 3 ply sock yarn. I did switch to a poly drive band and have noticed a huge difference. I kept my hemp in case this one should break, but I have no intention of going back. The poly drive makes treadling effortless and so smooth. Tensioning is a breeze. If you can get a poly band for your wheel, do give it a try.

The stash diet is still going ok. I nearly caved a few weeks back when I found some patterns I wanted in a catalog. I did order the patterns and was tempted by the yarn, but managed to resist. I don't think I have yarn in stash that would work for either pattern I bought, but they will give me incentive to finish what I'm doing so I can buy yarn for them this fall. I did cave on the perfume diet a bit. I bought two designer knockoffs (Mugler Angel and Comptoir Sud Pacific Amore de Cacao). I got 4 oz of the Angel knockoff for soap making and it is fantastic. I had a bottle of the real thing years ago and loved it. Not sure what brought it back to memory lately but I'm glad I was able to find a much more affordable version!

Amendment

2009-12-16T19:30:00.000-05:00

Hmm, the reaction to my stash diet was not as I had expected. Rather than agreement, I've gotten nothing but grief for my decision. Regardless, this feels good and right to me, so I'm going on as intended...knitting and spinning from stash for the first 3/4 of 2010. I'm going to make two amendments though. 1. Gift certificates, should I happen to get any, can be used freely and without guilt if I feel I need a treat. 2. For each sweater I finish (I've got 3 currently on needles and at least 2 in the wings), I can buy something. But only if I'm going to use it. No stash yarn. Ok, do you all feel better now?

I finished the Charlotte's Web shawl over the weekend. To my abject horror, I discovered a huge hole when I laid it out to block.It took several hours to dry in which time I was able to screw up my courage and fix the hole. I was able to ladder up the stitches and secured them with sewing thread. The fix is not perfect, but it is barely perceptible if you don't know what you are looking for. I wore the shawl to work this week to rave reviews. Promise I'll get a picture of it on sometime soon. I adore this pattern and plan to make more of these shawls. I might choose a different yarn next time. I used the Koigu KPPPM that is called for in the pattern. I used every inch of colors 3, 4 and 5. I've seen some lovely shawls done with Socks That Rock, that might be a someday option. I think it might also be nice done in one color rather than 5.

That being finished, my current projects are as follows:
1. Vanilla socks...3/4 done with the first sock. Made a ton of progress during the excruciating New Moon movie last weekend.
2. Twilight socks...just started the gusset on the first sock. This Crown Mountain Farms BFL is amazing. So so soft. Can't wait to see how these wear. As soft as they are, I hold little hope for longevity.
3. Skully take 2...about to decrease for the armhole on the front (back is finished).
4. Nutkin mittens...nearly done. I'm working the thumb on the second mitten. I don't like the way the first thumb turned out, I messed up the decrease, so I think I'm going to pull it back and reknit the top of the thumb.

A few weeks back I mentioned I applied for a FLP library card. I'm happy to report the card arrived in less than 2 weeks and I had no difficulty getting on the website and finding audiobooks. They use Overdrive rather than NetLibrary and it's taken me a while to get used to the interface, but I've found a bunch of books. The great thing with this system is it lets you create a wishlist. So I can go on when I have time and search for books and then when I'm read for a new read, I can pick something off my wishlist. On the downside, it doesn't look like the eBooks are compatible with Kindle, but I'm still trying to figure out the eBook thing so I could be wrong. Regardless, if you are looking for a source to borrow audiobooks, it looks like Free Library of Philadelphia is a good, inexpensive option.

Stash diet redux

2009-12-09T07:18:00.000-05:00

In late 2007 I went on a yarn diet. At the time I was trying to save money to buy my spinning wheel. I went 4 full months without buying any yarn. Now I'm once again contemplating dieting. Not necessarily to save money, although that will be a very happy side effect of the diet. I'm not an excessive stasher. I don't buy tons of yarn the way some knitters do. My trouble is that I tend to buy yarn for a project but then never seem to actually get to that project. I've got 3 sweaters on the needles that need attention. I've got yarn for at least 2 more sweaters, 4 or 5 shawls, umpteen balls of sock yarn and enough fiber to spin for maybe a dozen projects. It's time to knit/spin this stuff up. So I think I'm going to declare a freeze on yarn & fiber spending for most of 2010. Here are my intentions...

1. I will not purchase any yarn or fiber from January 1 through September 30, 2010. This will take me up to vacation time when I will sure want the freedom to shop.

2. Should I get any gift certificates for yarn shops, I will allow myself to use them for yarn if they would expire before 9/30/10. Otherwise, I'm going to try to hold off using them until the end as well.

3. I'm going to finish (or at least make a good stab at finishing) the 3 sweaters I've got going before starting anymore sweaters.

This diet is also going to apply to indie perfumes. My collection has gotten way out of hand. You've seen the pictures (and the collection has grown since the last pictures). You know. Those tiny little bottles are like crack to me. Well, no more. I've unsub'd all the mailing lists and dropped off the BPAL board. I've got plenty enough perfume to keep me sweet smelling for the duration of the diet, if not longer.

Just writing all this down seems liberating. Knowing I won't be spending money on stuff I don't really need is a relief. I don't think I'll feel deprived (most of the time). I think it will be nice to rediscover all the exciting projects I had planned in the past.

First snow and knitting round up

2009-12-06T09:25:00.004-05:00

We had our first snowfall of the season yesterday. I'm truly not a snow fan, but this was one of the good ones...gorgeous big fluffy flakes that fell gracefully and stuck to the grass and trees but melted off the sidewalks and streets. Just enough to make everything look pretty.
Today is supposed to be sunny and mild so it will probably all be gone by tomorrow.

Remember a few weeks back I posted about my aunt who gave me her Pfaltzgraff dishes? Well, being a knitter, you just KNOW what my thank you was going to be...The pattern is Monkey (no purl variety) and the yarn is Socks that Rock medium weight in Lagoon. The colors don't come out very well in the photo...they aren't nearly that glaringly bright. The socks have been sent off and I'm hoping they are keeping her feet toasty warm.

Since this blog has been sadly devoid of knitting content of late I thought I'd post some photos of my current WIPs.

First up are the Nutkin mittens. These had been languishing in the bottom of the knitting basket for months. With winter now here, I decided I better get in gear and finish them. The pattern is quite easy to memorize. It is actually a sock pattern that I'm modifying to mittens. These should be finished in a week or so.

Next are my current socks...
Stonehenge socks. This is the Twilight pattern from 2 at a Time Socks and the yarn is my handspun Crown Mountain Farms BFL. They are so soft and the colors are gorgeous. I'm in total love with CMF. I've heard people rave about how fabulous their fiber is and I must add my voice to the chorus. I believe the prep is top rather than roving so it drafts like butter. There are virtually no slubs or imperfections of any kind. Plus they give you a generous 8 ounces of fiber.

My other purse knitting is a pair of plain vanilla socks in JL Yarns Savlia. The yarn was super cheap and is quite fine in weight. I'm knitting them on US 1 since that's the smallest needle I had available. But I'm thinking I might go down to a US 0 for the next pair.

The final project I'm working on is a Charlotte's Web shawl.I am totally enamored with this shawl. I'm using 5 skeins of Koigu KPPPM as the pattern calls for. This is sock weight yarn so it's a bit heavier than the lace weight shawls I had been working on. Something about cold weather calls for knitting with heavier weight yarns. Lace weight seems to me to be better suited for warm weather knitting! Many folks knit this shawl with Socks that Rock and I do think that would be stunning, but it's cost prohibitive for me at the moment. The pattern is extremely easy to knit and goes fairly quickly despite the nature of triangular shawls with each row getting longer than the last. I'm about 14 rows from the end. I'm going to have to start thinking about what type of edging I want to do. There's a crocheted edging or a fringed edge. I love the look of the fringe, but I hate actually doing fringe so I'm still thinking about it.

Once I finish up the shawl I'm going to go back to the Fylingdales sweater I was working on last winter. I think I'm better than 50% done with it and should be able to finish it up this season. The Colour Your Own Philosopher's Sweater is still hiding in my closet too. That's a much more daunting prospect as I'm only midway done with the first sleeve! But I'm sure it will see action at some point this winter.

audiobook update

2009-12-01T12:31:00.002-05:00

I was noodling around on Ravelry the other day and discovered a group for audiobook lovers. Here I uncovered a thread regarding library downloads. Seems I'm not the only one who enjoys the download services offered by libraries. I also learned that there are libraries out there that will allow you to purchase a membership and enjoy their services even if you are out of the area. One such library is Free Library of Philadelphia. They offer a paid out of state membership for only $15 a year. I thought this sounded like a very reasonable price so I clicked over to check it out. Turns out if you've got an Access Pennsylvania library card (and mine is) you can join for FREE! So I filled out the application over the weekend and hope to have my card by next week. This should give me access not only to NetLibrary but to another service called OverDrive that I am unfamiliar with. Fingers crossed it works out. I'll be sure to post how I make out.

For now, since I finished Scarlet Letter (great book btw) I broke down and went to the library and borrowed an audiobook cd. I was disappointed to discover it's the abridged version. Why is this even allowed? I want to hear all of the author's words, not just those the producer picks and chooses. You do get the major points of a story, but it always feels like something's missing.

Audiobooks?

2009-11-24T21:10:00.002-05:00

Thanks to our new Pennsylvania budget cutting funds, our library has had to drop NetLibrary. NetLibrary was my main source for audiobooks for my Zen. I've found audiobooks to be the perfect companion for knitting, riding the exercise bike and while doing computer input at work. We can still checkout audiobook cds from the library, but it's time consuming and not entirely failproof to move them to the MP3 player. NetLibrary was great because you could get the audiobook all in one file. I'm hoping this is only a temporary thing, but for now, I'm looking for alternate sources for free/cheap audiobooks.

I've subscribed to CraftLit again and am listening to The Scarlet Letter. I'm fortunate to have resub'd after the book was finished so I won't have to wait for new chapters. The nice thing about Craftlit is that Heather gives some explanation to each chapter. For a non-literary type like me, this is extremely helpful in understanding the finer points of the book.

I'm considering treating myself to a Kindle for Christmas. I'm fortunate to have saved enough money this year to afford such a luxury. I'm just not entirely sure how much use I'd get out of it. In case you haven't figured it out, I'm cheap with a capital C. So how likely am I to spend the $10 a pop for most Kindle books. I know there are free ones out there and I'll be doing some investigating before I make a final decision. The thing I like about the new Kindle is that it now offers text to voice so the thing will actually read to me. How cool is that? I'm sure it's just a computer generated voice, no Jim Dale or George Guidall. Jury is still out. Anyone have one? Any thoughts?

Generous

2009-10-28T11:21:00.003-04:00

A few weeks back I as talking with mom about having found some old brown Pfaltzgraff dishes at the flea market. The pattern is called Gourmet. They are dark brown with a cream colored, often mottled band around the edges. My Grandma Miller had these dishes so they kindle a real sense of nostalgia in me, fondly reminding me of scrumptious meals at her house. The pattern is fairly easy to find at flea markets and not terribly expensive. So I've picked up a few pieces here and there. So I'm telling mom all this and she said she recalled one of my aunt's mentioning that she had a set of these dishes she wasn't using and had been looking to get rid of them. She said she would inquire if my aunt still had them and let her know I was interested. As luck would have it, she did still have the dishes and by further luck, my folks were planning a visit to see her (she lives a few states away).

So my parents got back from there trip and today dropped off the dishes. Now I was expecting maybe 4 or 5 place settings since my aunt had said she knew some had been broken over the years. So I was blown away when dad opened the car trunk and I found 2 boxes and 2 tote bags full of dishes. My aunt sent me not only the dishes but all of her serving pieces.My mind is reeling at the shear generosity of it.The pieces are gorgeous and I will put as much of it to use as I possibly can. Some of the larger pieces may have to be stored since I don't have much occasion for their use. But I guarantee each piece will be cherished.

When I asked my parents was she sure she didn't want anything for all this, they told me her reply was simply "maybe she'll think of me when she uses them". This, I promise, I will!

The most wonderful time of the year!

2009-10-27T09:36:00.004-04:00

Ah, it's that time of year again. There's a nip in the air, the leaves are aglow in bright reds and yellows, Halloween is just around the corner and C and I are on vacation. As I'm sure I've said before, we are staycation people and this year is no different. The week leading up to vacation was a bit hectic so this week of relaxation was even more welcome. I'm relishing in complete self indulgence.

Friday we started off with a trip to some of our favorite stores. We didn't find anything at Comics and Paperbacks but had fun looking around, he at comics and I at the mystery books. Then it was off to Yarn Love in Hummelstown. I got to look at and fondle all the gorgeous yarns they stock and was thrilled to see knit samples of Clapotis and Damson on display. It's all well and good to see photos on Ravelry of yarns and knitted items, but nothing compares to seeing them in person! I bought a skein of Dream in Color Smooshy. Gorgeous gorgeous yarn. The colors are so intense. I met the owner of YL, Pam. What a delightful person. We chatted about yarns and patterns and she made me feel so at home. I've been impressed with this store every time I've been there. We finished up the day at Olde Factory Antiques again. My mother in law spied the Jello Halloween molds I managed to miss when they were in the grocery store and I've wanted for soap making. I also picked up some small glass dishes for soaping.

Speaking of soaping, I ordered the Swirl Soap kit from Brambleberry to learn swirled melt and pour over vacation. You can see a video of the technique on SoapQueen tv. That's on the agenda for later today.

I've finished a few knitting projects. A pair of No Purl Monkey socks in Katsara Panda yarn.This is a fast knit and comfortable sock pattern. I'm not as into the pastel colors as I was when I purchased this yarn a few years back. These may end up being gifted to someone.

Also finished a Burnished Leaves cowl. This was knit in Knit Picks Shadow yarn. Soft and light as a feather. Not too warm, just enough to keep my neck warm when my hair is up. This too was a quick and easy knit.

On the needles:
Skully, take 2. Yes, I'm making a second stab at the Skully sweater. I'm actually using the modified drop shoulder sweater pattern from Knitter's Book of Sweater patterns and only using the skull & cross bones chart from the original pattern.

Vanilla socks. This is my current purse knitting. JL Yarn Salvia in a green, yellow and red colorway.

Grandma's Favorite washcloth. Been knitting these like potato chips, one right after the other.

And various other projects that get a row or two at a time. It's delightful to have such a variety of things to occupy my time!

Score!

2009-09-27T11:58:00.005-04:00

I had a few days off this week and one day hubby and I visited one of our favorite antique stores in Hummelstown, Olde Factory Antiques (no website, but you can find directions here). It's an old 3 story factory loaded with whatnots and their prices are usually pretty good. On the second floor I found an old Singer sewing machine for $5. I looked twice. Made C come over and look. Yep, $5! I love vintage sewing stuff but generally it's too pricey for my frugal nature. But $5, there was no way we were passing this up. The thing weighs a ton and was filthy. But we bought it.

We got it home and I worked on cleaning it up. The decals are very worn and there's a good bit of rust, but it cleaned up pretty nicely. We did a bunch of research on the Internet and found out it is a Singer 27 vibrating shuttle. Manufactured in 1906 in Elizabeth NJ. It is a handcranked machine. Some pictures show an actual crank you could turn. This one has a wheel making it feel a bit cumbersome to crank for me. The machine could be mounted on a treadle stand and driven with a belt by the treadle (so I'll keep my eyes open for one!)

The bobbin is unlike any I've seen before. It's long and thin and rides in a bullet shaped shuttle.
The bobbin winding mechanism seems not to be working. It won't hold the bobbin and there isn't a band to drive the mechanism. So far I've not been able to locate instructions or pictures of how it is supposed to work.

The machine does appear to be in working order. The crank turns easily and quietly. The spool pin is missing but would be easy enough to replace. We are fortunate to have a sewing machine repair man a few blocks from our home. He serviced my Kenmore this summer. He works from his home and is a wealth of information. C and I chatted with him about old sewing machines for nearly half an hour when we picked up my machine. We plan to make an appointment to get his opinion on the machine in the near future.

I don't really plan to use this as a working machine. Although I would be tickled if we could get it into working order. Just for the joy of saying I got a sewing machine for $5! For now it's strictly for decoration.

I do have my eyes open for an old Singer Featherweight in working order though. They are works of beauty and I understand they are fabulous little sewing machines. We often see them at the quilt shows for anywhere from $200 to $500. Someday....

It's a knitter's love fest

2009-09-20T17:05:00.005-04:00

I'm riding pretty high on the knitting mojo right now. I finished the Heroine jacket and could not possibly love it more.It felted beautifully in one machine wash cycle in hot water with 2 pair of jeans. The collar is rather big. Where I to knit it again I would definitely rework the collar. But I find if I fold it back it's not too bothersome. I've sewn the bottoms of the lapels down so I've got pockets. Although the jacket is rather bulky it offers the ideal amount of warmth. I've been able to wear it as a blazer at work on chilly mornings and it works equally well as an outdoors jacket. The final count was 26 balls of Knit Picks Wool of the Andes in Current and 8 celtic cross buttons from Buttonsgalore on Esty (go buy from her if you need buttons, she's wonderful to deal with!)

I finally finished the Heart and Sole toe up socks I started back in April. I'm not really that slow a knitter. But I am an easily distracted knitter and other projects just seemed to keep pulling me away. I love Wendy Johnson's pattern for the slip stitch heel toe up sock. I still enjoy my top down socks. However, if I want to knit toe up socks, this will be the pattern I use.

I've been spinning again. Finished two skeins of superwash mill ends that I got from Jen. She sent me a whole bag full months ago to try to encourage me to spin enough yarn for a sweater. After sampling and test knitting I decided I liked the look of 3 ply for this yarn so it's taken me some time to spin. The fiber is a joy to spin and the yarn is lovely. But as I said, I'm easily distracted and although I DO want to spin enough yarn for a sweater....someday.... my current obsession is to finally spin a good 3 ply sock yarn. I've been reading Intentional Spinner and am hoping to pick up Spin Control soon to improve my spinning knowledge. And I've been practicing on some Ashland Bay merino top. I moved to a smaller ratio on my Minstrel (8.5 to 1) and it made a world of difference. I am proud to say I have finally successfully spun what I consider a fair-to-middlin sock yarn.Granted it's only maybe 30 yds, but it's a start. I'm ready to jump in and use the "good fiber". And check out all the new Good fiber I've got to choose from!!!The big lump on the left is Crown Mountain BFL in Stonehenge. 8 (that's E I G H T) ounces! In front 4 ounces of BFL in Swamp Flower from Liberty's Yarns. And all those lovely batts came from Jen. I'm so happy to let you guys know Hanks in the Hood is back in full force. Her Etsy shop is chock full of gorgeous custom blended batts and her handspun yarns.

I finally broke down and treated myself to a knitter's purse. I lusted after a Jordana Paige for ages but could never bring myself to spend the considerable amount of money one costs. Especially since I've heard from more than one person that they aren't the best made purses you can buy. A mention of her Rio bag on a podcast got me thinking about and jonesing once again for a cool knitter's purse. So I started combing the internet for the perfect bag. I found it in the Namaste Newport bag.The color is Peacock and is a rich teal blue. The bag is the perfect size to hold all my purse stuff on one side and my knitting on the other. In the center there's a full length pocket to keep wallet and such secure. My only complaint was that there's only 2 pockets in the purse. I'm an organization FREAK when it comes to my purse. I hate things running around loose in there. So I sewed up a pocket organizer (good instructions here, takes less than 1/2 hour to sew) and I was all set.Now everything has a place, my bag is super organized and I've got knitting with me wherever I go. I got mine from Hip Mountain Mama (click the bag link to go to her site) since she had the best price and came highly recommended on Ravelry. I too can heartily recommend her site. Service was excellent. I ordered on Labor Day weekend and had my bag by Thursday!

2009-08-30T16:12:00.003-04:00

We are blessed with cooler temperatures this weekend and with September only a day away I'm really getting excited for fall to arrive. I've been working on Heroine nearly exclusively and finished the body last night. I've had major issues with row counting on this sweater. I don't know if my clicker is getting bumped in the bag or if I'm just brain dead but all 3 pieces I've knit so far have had to be ripped at least once. Thankfully it's a fast knit so it wasn't heart wrenching to tear back 10 rows and reknit them. After the fact I discovered I'd misplaced one of the buttonholes on the left front. I had already finished the piece when I discovered the mistake and there was no way I was ripping back that far. Since the jacket is felted and the buttonholes aren't technically functional, I decided to duplicate stitch over the errant buttonhole and will hand sew in the correct buttonhole after the jacket is felted. Hopefully I won't regret this decision. I steam blocked the parts and stitched up the shoulder seams just in time for Quinn to claim the jacket for her afternoon nap.I'm now knitting the sleeves and have decided to do both at the same time. This slows things down a bit, but when I'm done, I'm done. I have to be careful when I set my work down to be sure not to stop between the two sleeves as it's really hard to tell which sleeve I stopped on.

A change of perspective

2009-08-22T15:18:00.003-04:00

Two things happened yesterday. Well, that's probably an understatement. Lots of things happened. One pretty big bad thing happened early in the day which set my mood switch on "very bad". And it stayed stuck there all day. Then, in the evening when I had time to sit down here at the computer and scan some of my favorite blogs and catch up for the week, I came across this post on Crazy Aunt Purl's blog. She talked about how it's so easy to dwell on the negative, but sometimes what we really need to do is concentrate on the good. So in that spirit, I've decided to post ten things that make me happy rather than whinge on about the bad stuff. Here goes, in absolutely no particular order....

10 things that make me happy.

Knitting. Who couldn't have guessed that. It not only makes me happy, it makes me calm.
My cats
My garden
Audiobooks and podcasts. Listening to someone else tell me stories is a joy instilled in me from when I was a wee sprout and mom would read Nancy Drew to my sister and I.
Cozy mysteries. Sure someone died last week, but we REALLY need to plan this town dance!
Chocolate. The more the better. I don't think I've had a day without at least a bite of chocolate in the last year, at least.
My friends, family and my hubby
Sitting on my porch with a gentle breeze blowing and Garrison Keillor on the radio
My huge collection of sniffies (perfume oils). BPAL though art my love.
Getting a package in the mail. Am I the only one who gets a thrill when they see a brown box at the door?

Next time you are having one of those days and you feel like Eeyore or Oscar the grouch, try Laurie's trick and take a few minutes to think about the good stuff. You might realize things maybe aren't all as bad as they seem and there's still good around you.

Much peace to you today.

A lot going on

2009-08-16T10:06:00.005-04:00

It's been busy here. Summer always seems so full. The garden harvest is in full force. I've done 16 pints of tomatoes and 7 pints of pickles. We froze peppers, lima beans and okra. For once the zucchini has been coming in at a nice slow steady pace, about 1 or two per week. I'm not a fan of frozen zucchini so it's nice when it comes in so that we can eat it right away. We did dehydrated tomatoes this year which are super tasty. I'm out of canning jars so I think I'll end up dehydrating or freezing any more tomatoes that come in. We are starting to get kohlrabi (only planted one row.) Our cranberry beans, brussells sprouts and broccoli are all looking great (although we are having problems with some kind of caterpillar eating the leaves so we have to keep up with spraying. The red calypso beans are apparently extremely tasty to bunnies. The little rabbit ate all 16 plants clear down to the ground! At least he hasn't touched anything else so I guess I can live with it.

On the crafty front, I have been industriously working away on a myriad of projects.

I finished the foulard.Egh, not thrilled with it. Being knit on the bias it stretches like the dickens and just looks sloppy to me. It's also much smaller than I expected, even though I made the large size. It'll be fine for keeping my shoulders warm, but it's not a pattern I would knit again.

The sweatshirt jacket I bought the pattern for at Quilt Odyssey is coming along splendidly.The body is finished and I wore it embellished to work this week.Here you can see all the embellishments that need to be finished and applied. I need to make somewhere in the neighborhood of 80-90 yoyos. The Clover YoYo makers have been a godsend. I made the first few yoyos the traditional way and had decided it wasn't worth the hassle and was going to skip the yoyos all together. Then mom introduced me to this gadget. Wow, you can't believe how easy it is to make yoyos. I can make 3 in like ten minutes. If you need to make yoyos, I HIGHLY recommend them.

After knitting laceweight yarn all summer I suddenly got the urge to knit something heavier. I think the fact that September is just one page away has me longing for fall! Ever since I saw it in last winter's Twist Collective, I've had my eye on Heroine. Suddenly I decided now was the time to make it. I purchased Knit Picks Wool of the Andes in Current and got started right away.This jacket is knit at a larger gauge then felted down to size when it's completed. I was careful to swatch and measure before I started since felting is such a finicky process and I would hate to put all that time and money into a project and not have it fit! I had to adjust my needle size down and knit the size larger than I first thought, but I think this should work (fingers crossed). After only two day's work I'm halfway up the back. I'm pretty sure I'm going to need to order more yarn since I'm having to knit the next larger size, so this is my main priority knitting at the moment. I want to get far enough along to see where I stand and try to order more yarn right away while I might still be able to get the same dye lot.

I was a big winner recently! Our local grocery store gave away a gas grill and yours truly was picked the winner. I was tickled pink since only a few weeks before I was lamenting to C how much I would love a gas grill, this on a night when the charcoal grill was refusing to light. I'm still getting the hang of cooking on gas and am still a little nervous I'll blow myself up.

Quilt Odyssey recap and One Pretty Thing

2009-08-01T20:43:00.003-04:00

This weekend was the Quilt Odyssey quilt show in Hershey. It's become an annual tradition for mom and I to attend. This year it looked for a bit like we might not make it due to car trouble, but in the end we were able to go and had a great time. The show was excellent as always. This show always includes modern quilts as well as a selection of antique quilts (my favorites). Much of the show did not allow photography, so I didn't get any pictures. There were some absolutely stunning exhibits of outstanding craftsmanship. My quilting is firmly grounded in the utilitarian and I don't aspire to 12 stitches per inch in hand quilting. But I sure can appreciate the skill required to achieve such fine results. Even some of the machine quilting could take your breath away. The merchant mall was fun and tempting as always. I was a pillar of restraint and walked away with only a nifty compass type tool for drawing every size circle imaginable and this gorgeous button jacket pattern. Mom and I are both planning to make this sweet tog. I was on a mission to get wool quilt batting for the quilt kit I completed from last years show. Didn't find any at the show, but was able to order it online. We topped the day off with lunch at Houlihan's and some shopping at the Hershey Outlets. Despite getting soaked in the rain, it was a truly enjoyable day.

Looking for a daily dose of crafty inspiration, check out One Pretty Thing. This blog became an instant favorite when I discovered it some time ago. I always stop by at least once a week and always find something I would love to make.

Wormwood, HP and, yes, some FOs

2009-07-19T08:38:00.007-04:00

The fantabulous weather continues here in PA. Low 80s during the day and cool nights, perfect for sleeping. I finished the Summer Sweater (based on Sally Melville's Favorite Sweater) and had the great pleasure of wearing it yesterday.The cotton/microfiber blend yarn is wonderfully soft and drapey. The large, open gauge of the sleeves and lower half of the sweater make it cool enough for warmish days and warm enough for coolish nights. I'm very pleased with this sweater and am contemplating knitting another one.

I finished a hat and booties to go with the baby cardi for C's friend.Baby stuff is just so darn cute!

I'm still knitting away with my laceweight yarns. I've now got 3 projects going...the stole I showed you before, this beaded triangle shawl (which is actually quite a bit further along now; this picture is from a few weeks ago), and a square garter stitch shawl called a foulard. The downside to laceweight yarn is it takes forever (at least for me) to show much progress. This is also the upside, though, since it means I get the pleasure of knitting the project for quite a long time.

The garden is going like gangbusters. We got our first zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers this last week. We've harvested most of the storage onions and all the garlic and have them hanging in the garage to cure. Last year we dried them on screens on our patio but ended up losing a bunch when they got wet from rain. This year we've installed cup hooks along the garage rafter beams and are hanging everything in bunches to dry. So far this seems to be working exceptionally well. I'm hoping the Candy onions mature soon. The pumpkin plants are trying desperately to take over that end of the bed. In the spots vacated by the alliums, we now have dry beans (red calypso and cranberry) and brussels sprouts and broccoli. I hold my breath every morning when I venture out to see if the rabbits have eaten the broccoli, so far we've been lucky. After last year's debacle, I wasn't sure if I wanted to try again.

I must share with you my newest obsession....Wormwood. No, not the absinthe variety, but the podcast. Wormwood is a serialized mystery in the style of old radio drama. It's actually a few years old. Seasons one and two are available in their entirety and season three is set to start soon. I've only completed the first season and just started season two. The story revolves around Zander Crowe, a mysterious psychiatrist with ties to the occult who is drawn to the town of Wormwood by visions of a drowned woman. There's murder and mayhem, weird cults and oddball characters. The voice actors do a great job, particularly the guy who does Crowe. If you're a fan of radio drama, be sure to check it out.

I had the opportunity to see HBP yesterday at the MoviEtown cinema. I love this theater. It's an old car dealership building that's been reoutfitted to a state of the art movie theater. The seats are comfy, the sound system is great and, best of all, you can get coffee at the concession stand. There were lots of previews before the movie. I was somewhat excited to see there's a new Sherlock Holmes film coming out, but the preview doesn't really leave me dieing to see it. I do like Robert Downey Jr (go see Ironman!) but this portrayal of Holmes seems so far out of character. It's definitely Holmes for the new century.

Obviously, as we've seen with the last few HP movies, the movies can in no way do justice to the books. The movie folks pick the highlights and go from there. HBP was no exception and is by far the most altered. Overall, I liked the film alot. This was my favorite book of the series. It's the book of explanation. The movie could never live up to my perception of the book. I'm not going to go into any detail since I want to wait until I have a chance to see it and discuss it with my number one HP buddy, my sister. My advice, if you haven't read the book first (and shame on you if you haven't), but if you haven't, see the movie first, then read the book. You'll find the book so much richer.

Back on Etsy

2009-07-03T13:36:00.005-04:00

After several months off, I'm finally back on Etsy with hand dyed sock yarn and small tote bags. Click the link at right to see what's in my shop.

Now that it's July and summer is officially here (although it doesn't feel like it with temps still in the very tolerable upper 70s and low 80s), it's time for a garden update...

We had a delightful June. Moderate temperatures and lots of rain. The garden is flourishing.
The peppers are all loaded with fruit, the pumpkins are eagerly attempting to overtake the garden, the limas are starting to set pods, the snow peas are nearly done.Although this looks rather shabby, it's a great sign that our garlic and onions are nearly ready to harvest. Once the tops drop and start to wither, we'll pull these out and hang them to dry. I'm currently looking for some short season shell beans to plant in here once the onions are out to keep the bed active until fall. This bed has proved perfect for the alliums and we'll definitely replant them here this fall.

Our tomatoes are growing like gangbusters. No signs of red yet, but we'll have tons once they start to ripen. And we finally got a zucchini plant that's starting to show some buds.

The mums and lavender I experimented with starting were only mildly successful. None of the lavender seems to be rooting, but most of the mums seem healthy and are starting to show some roots. In then center I've got some broccoli and Brussels sprouts starting for fall planting. At the moment I can't tell which is which since the marker I used to write on the tags was apparently not waterproof.

We've got bunnies again this year, but so far they've been far less destructive than the ants have been. This little dude is so tame I could nearly reach out and pet it. I found it munching away on the sweet peas, but since they are nearly done anyway, I figured I'd let the little fellow have its treat.

Earlier this week we had a rather strong thunderstorm that left us with this display of beauty.The double rainbow was so bright and perfectly arched we imagined we could actually drive to the end of it!

SoapQueen TV

2009-06-05T12:20:00.002-04:00

I love making soap and was excited to see that Anne Marie of Brambleberry was going to be producing soap making videos this summer. She's got 6 episodes up so far and they are great. So far she's only dealt with melt and pour soap and I'm not sure if she'll be covering any other methods in the future or not. If you are at all interested in soapmaking, be sure to check it out...http://www.youtube.com/user/soapqueentv

2009-05-31T11:51:00.003-04:00

The sweet little baby sweater is finished.As I was knitting it I listened to the KnitPicks podcast about knitting for babies and one of the ladies (a new mommie) said never to use the cutesy buttons because they are too hard to do up with a squirming baby. Since I already had the buttons, I chose to ignore this advice. They do seem to slip through the button holes easily enough. And they are just so cute!

I'm still happily knitting away on the summer sweater and shawl, but there's not a lot of visible progress, so no pictures.

We had a week of showers and the garden is doing wonderful as a result. So are the weeds, unfortunately. I hate weeding, with a passion. But I did try to get the majority of the big ones out while the ground was soft. It looks like we are losing the cherry tomatoes I planted to replace the first cherry tomato plants that died. I'm really wondering if I'm just not supposed to have them this year. I picked up another plant at the flea market today, my last ditch effort.

My latest gardening experiment is to try to propagate some lavender and mums for a bed that runs along side my house. This bed gets full south sun all day and tends on the dry side. Lavender seems to thrive there and I'm hoping to get enough plants to root to go the length of the bed. I'm also trying to propagate mums for the fall. The instructions I found said you could either start them in water or in soil with rooting compound. The water method did not work for me...they just rotted. So I took a bunch of new cuttings today and am trying them with rooting compound. Fingers crossed it works. Could save a good bit of money in plants if it does.

It is absolutely gorgeous here today. The sun is shining, its in the mid 70s with a light breeze. The plan for the afternoon is knitting and catching up with my podcasts out on the porch. I recently got a new Zen Mozaic after getting tired of fighting with my Zen V+ and it's sticky play button . I love the Zen MP3 players. If you like audiobooks they are a dream since they allow you to set bookmarks. The new Mozaic even has a built in speaker so I can listen wirefree.

2009-05-17T10:06:00.005-04:00

Ok, prepare yourself for an extremely photo-heavy post. Lots to show you this week.

Check out how well the garden is coming along! This is just 3 weeks after my last photos.The tomatoes have doubled in size. You can't see it, but we lost one of the eggplants so I'll be picking up another plant this week to replace it.
The main bed is much changed as well. We put up a make-shift fence to keep the bunnies out (and it's actually working!) The onions are all thriving. The snow peas are up 5-6 inches. The limas are just starting to come up (dad says it's still a bit cool for them to sprout yet). The pumpkins are up and I saw today the first acorn squash has also sprouted. The cucumbers are looking a little sad, but I think they'll pull through if we get some sunshine. And the peppers are doing excellently. On the left side of the wall you might be able to barely perceive the soda bottles lining the bed. I've planted okra in that bed and have them capped with 2 liter soda bottles to deter the rabbits from eatting them up. In the very back of the picture is my garlic and onion bed (yes, I know, we've got a lot of onions planted. But we love them, they keep well and are uber-cheap to plant.) The garlic and egyptian onions were planted in the fall. It was so much fun to see something go dormant for a few months then spring to life when the weather warmed up.

The Topsy Turveys were a complete bust. The plants died within a week. I didn't even bother replanting them. Instead I purchased some more cherry tomatoes and planted them in a regular hanging basket. So far, they are surviving much better.

I've been inspired to sew again lately. I got this cute little book from the library, Sew Pretty Homestyle. Chock full of easy and adorable shabby chic sewing projects. This weekend I undertook sewing cushions for our patio chairs (the ubiquitous plastic stacking chairs). The fabric is sweet and looks very nice on our green chairs. I had some trouble with sizing...the first one was a little too small. The second one I mis-measured. By the third I think I got it down. One more to go.

Also on the sewing front, I picked up Lexi Barnes new book Sew What! Bags. My mom sews lovely fabric purses and I would like to try my hand at it too. I muddle around and can make a decent tote bag, but I want to learn more. So I thought this might be a good jumping off point. Boy was I right! This book provides excellent instructions for sewing simple, functional and very attractive bags in several styles. She also includes a very good section for beginning sewers (something I am not, but it never hurts to refresh your mind on the basics). Now I'm on the look out for kitchy fabrics to turn into glorious bags!

Knitting has not been forgotten, not in the least. I'm still rocking the laceweight wrap. I just adore this yarn. It's like knitting with air. I'm a little concerned it's not going to be as wide as I would have liked. I know it will block out some...I'm figuring 20" wide blocked, but it's so hard to judge on the needles. Still, I just want something to throw over my shoulders and I am confident this will fit the bill. The pattern is super easy...20 rows stockinette, 6 row lace pattern, repeat ad nauseum (I'm throwing in a purl ridge every so often to break up the pattern).

And since I'm loving this laceweight so much, I bought some more. This time from handpaintedyarn.com. I've purchased their worsted weight yarns in the past and have loved them so I was confident I wouldn't be disappointed with their lace weight
2 skeins of Cedro Dulce and 1 of Rocas De Mar. I love the Rocas and would have bought more, but this was their last skein. The yarn is very nice although not as soft as 100purewool. This yarn also comes from Uruguay, however, they have a US distribution center so the shipping is much less and much faster (a few days rather than a few weeks.)

A friend of hubby's is expecting a child so I jumped at the opportunity to knit a baby sweater. I'm knitting the Lion Brand Garter Ridge Baby Cardigan. The yarn is Plymouth Dreambaby DK which is a different gauge than the pattern calls for. But the adaptation is simple enough. I'm hoping the pale sage green will be appropriate for a boy or girl since we don't know what the sex will be. And the little teddy bear buttons are sweet as can be.

I don't recall if I mentioned wanting to knit a summer sweater or not, but I've had the desire to do so for some time. As always, it was my deep seated hatred of cotton that kept me from doing so. But, as I've said before, I very much want to grow as a knitter and stop letting things hold me back. So I'm giving cotton another try. This is the Sally's Summer Sweater from The Knit Stitch, knit in Valley Yarns Longmeadow.I'm knitting the sweater much shorter than the tunic length called for (who wants a big tunic in the summer?!) The yarn is a dream. Yes, a dream! So soft and drapey. I'm sure it's the microfiber content that tames the cotton into submission. Finally, a cotton I may be able to love.

Not much progress on the socks, only because I've been knitting mostly on the shawl and sweater. I do really like the Red Heart Yarn. I'd venture to say (so far) it's my favorite of the craft store brand sock yarns. Can you believe it? RED HEART! It is really nice. Soft but sturdy and the colors are classy.

Laceweight

2009-04-28T07:34:00.001-04:00

Anyone who knows me and my knitting will know that I have a love/hate relationship with fine yarns. It took me a good year or two of false starts before I embraced and fell in love with socks. I'm still working to reach that same comfort zone with laceweight yarn. I've reached a point in my knitting life where I'm ready to expand my horizons and venture into new territory. The February Lady proved to me I could successfully tackle lace albeit at a large gauge. Now I'm itching to try laceweight yarn again. So I took the plunge and ordered 2 skeins of Nicanor from 100PureWool.com. I chose standard shipping and the package took about 3 weeks to arrive from Uraguay. The yarn is fabulous. The softest merino you can imagine, soft spun in a singles yarn. The color is gorgeous. Even though I had other things to attend to last night, I made sure to carve out enough time to wind one of the skeins up and cast on for a wrap.I'm improvising the pattern and it will be very plain. I figure tackling the laceweight yarn will be enough of a challenge without struggling through a lace pattern as well. So far, I'm in heaven. This little exercise in growth may or may not work out for me, but at the moment, the prospect is good.

Garden inventory

2009-04-26T09:17:00.005-04:00

Mother nature has turned up the heat so we took advantage of the sunny weather and got to planting the garden. Dad and I took a trip to my favorite greenhouse (Zimmey's outside of Schaefferstown if you are in the area) yesterday and stocked up on plants. He only picked up a few plants. He's more old school about planting things at specific times and whatnot. That's cool for him, being retired and all, he can plant at his leisure. Hubby and I both work so we plant when we have the opportunity. So far this approach hasn't caused us any trouble. So I bought everything I could. A whole garden's worth of plants and all the flowers for my beds for $20! You so can not beat that.

Once again, the long skinny bed is dedicated to eggplant and tomatoes.4 Dusky eggplants, 2 Roma tomatoes, 2 Beefstake tomatoes and 2 Early Girl tomatoes. I've also planted seed for a yellow squash plant in this bed.

The main bed has 2 varieties of onions, snow peas, lima beans and peppers planted so far. We will also be planting cucumbers (which weren't available yet) and pumpkins in this bed. There's still a good bit of room left in the center of the bed for something else, but I'm undecided what I'll plant there. Perhaps broccoli (although the rabbit debacle of last year has me shying away form that. Maybe another squash. We need to get the rest of the weedblock down. I'm only using it on the right side of the garden. I find it difficult to use around the onions and seed rows. But I do like using it where I can. It helps cut down on weeding and also keeps the stray cats from using the garden as a toilet (which they did last night in the uncovered area!) I think we are going to put up chicken wire fencing as well. It will at least keep the rabbits out if not the cats.

I started the okra seeds in little popup pots and they are just starting to germinate. They'll be planted in a bed on the other side of the garden wall. It used to be a flower bed, but I would prefer to put it to use for food.

And finally, the ultimate in hillbilly gardening...the Topsy Turvy. Aren't they the tackiest looking things ever? I'm a bit embarassed to post this picture but, yes, I gave in to the hype and decided to try the hanging tomato planters. The one on the left has 2 Tom Thumb cherry tomatoes and the one on the right has a Bush Goliath tomato. My mother in law grows her tomatoes over a wall (so they basically grown down) and they are the most prolific and tastey tomatoes you can find. I know her excellent soil is part of the equation, but I think the vines growing with gravity rather than against it could only be a good thing. I'll keep you posted if this actually works or not.

Still not much knitting going on here. Still working on the Christmas project, although the end is in sight there. I finished the horrid, scratchy socks.I do love the colors and they did soften up a bit after washing, so all is not lost. I'm sure I'll wear them. I ran out of the variegated yarn on the second sock, so the toe area looks bigger on one sock than the other. At least that'll be hidden in the shoe.

Here's the Nutkin mittens I was talking about.I adore this Imagination yarn. So soft and the colors are fabulous. The pictures don't do it justice.
Since I finished a pair of socks, I started another.
I received Wendy Johnson's new sock book in the mail this week so decided to go toe up this time. I have knit toe up in the past and do like the technique alot, except for the short row heels. Wendy's book offers instructions for toe up socks with gusset heels! Yay!! I'm using HiyaHiya needles and Red Heart Heart and Sole yarn. Love the needles (possible more than KP Options! The join is much nicer). The yarn is also a lovely surprise. I was a bit disappointed with Lion Brand's Sock Ease, but this craft store yarn seems really nice so far.

Starting the garden 2009

2009-04-18T12:05:00.000-04:00

I survived another tax season, hooray!! Now I'm seriously ready to get back to normal. The weather is turning a bit warmer, although the nights are still cool.

We've been able to do some work on the garden. We've doubled the size of the main bed, thanks in large part to my dad. After spending the last month and a half rehabilitating from knee replacement surgery, he was ready for some fresh air and exercise. So I came home one day and found he cleared the grass and rototilled the new bed.I was able to get the onions and snow peas planted this week. Like many folks, we are hoping to grow more of our own veggies this year. In addition to my usuals...onions, peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, squash and cucumbers, we are adding okra, snow peas, lima beans, garlic and pumpkins (the last mostly for Halloween decorations!) We'll need to wait another week or two to get the rest of the plants and seeds in until the nights quit getting down in the 30s.

We also expanded a small bed that has bleeding hearts and ferns to make room for a blueberry bush.This is a self pollinating, dwarf variety. It will take a year or two to mature to the point it will produce fruit, unfortunately.

Mostly I've got no knitting mojo at the moment. I've got a few projects going...the Colour Your Own fair isle (still on the sleeve), the horrid scratchy socks (thankfully well into the foot of the second sock), a pair of Nutkin socks that are now going to be mittens in Knit Picks Imagination yarn and a Christmas present (don't be impressed, it was supposed to be knit for last Christmas, really determined to make sure it gets done for this Christmas). I work a bit on each of them but nothing is really inspring me. I've ordered some laceweight yarn for a shawl, perhaps that will get me going again.

Instead of knitting, I've been reading. I'm trying to get through Breaking Dawn. As much as I enjoyed Twilight, I just can not get into this book. I think I've mentioned before, I'm not a Bella fan, nor do I really care for Jacob. The vampire thing is the only thing this series has going for it. Everyone assures me it gets better, so I keep slogging along. I've also been reading Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. Now this is an excellent book. It got me back into baking my own bread and what fabulous bread it is. If you love homemade bread, but hate the work, this is the book for you. Plus you can make small loaves so they get eaten up before they go stale.

2009-03-21T14:05:00.005-04:00

Even though tax season is in full swing I've managed to keep a fairly good attitude (most days). I do seriously credit my knitting and spinning for helping me keep my sanity. I've been really quite productive with both lately.

I finished the February Lady Sweater.This was a delight to knit even though I am not a lace knitting fan. I didn't realize until it was too late that the lace has a tendency to grow. So my sweater is a bit on the long side. I wanted it to just graze the top of my hips and it ended up below my bum. But it still looks and fits great.

Here is my sock in progress
It's just a plain vanilla sock. I'm using some yarn I got ages ago from an Ebay dyer called KimiK. The yarn felt so rough to me I never felt inspired to use it. But the sock yarn stash is getting low and with money the way it is, I decided to give it a try. I'm surprised how nicely it's knitting up. The colors are just gorgeous. The kit included one variegated yarn and two kettle dyed coordinates so I'm knitting the cuff, heel and toe in the solid color and the body in the variegated.

My Colour Your Own fair isle sweater is well underway.This pattern comes from the book Fair Isle Sweaters Simplified. The book is fantastic. Their fair isle technique is so easy and provides great results. For this design, you choose your colors as you go along. It's fun and exciting to see how it's turing out. Once I get past this first sleeve, I'll be able to coast for a bit on the second sleeve since I can simply duplicate the color choices there.

On the spinning front I spun two batches of roving up. The first was from Pigeon Roof Studios, superwash bfl in the color NightshadeI didn't do such a great job splitting the roving up as I ended up with one light and one dark skein. But the colors complement each other well.

The second is a Hanks in the Hood merino batt called Blueberry IceThere's a bit of sparkle in there that doesn't show up on the photo.

There's currently nothing on my wheel. Jen is sending me fiber to spin for a sweater! I can't believe I let her talk me into spinning a whole sweater's worth of yarn. It should be here by next weekend which I'll hopefully have off from work so I can get started on it.

And finally, a nifty little project I heard about on the Stitch It podcast. These are felted dryer balls.
I had a set of the plastic dryer balls and thought they worked adequitly well. But they do make a lot of noise and one of them ended up wearing out so I was down to one. So when I hear Meghan talk about them, I looked up the instructions. I have plenty of scrap wool laying around so I didn't even have to go to the store. Basically, you take plain wool yarn (no superwash, it has to be feltable) and wrap a tight small ball. You pop the balls in an old piece of nylons/panyhose and toss them in the washer and dryer for a few cycles. When the balls seem to hold together pretty well, you add more layers of yarn, wrapping tightly, until they are as big as you want them. Then you repeat the washing/drying process until they are felted enough that they won't fall apart, then you can start using them as dryer balls. They work fabulously. My clothes are soft as can be without a drop of fabric softener. They don't prevent static, but I can live with static. And if you keep the synthetics out of the dryer, you reduce your static anyway. They do tend to pickup a bit of lint (you can see mine are looking a bit shabby already) but this is purely cosmetic. If it bothers you, you can shave the pills off. I'm not that fussy.

Darn you Brenda Dayne!

2009-02-27T19:41:00.002-05:00

I am a HUGE Brenda Dayne fan. I feel her honorary title of saint is much deserved. If I were asked what one person I would love to meet, her name would be top of the list. Her knitting podcasts have been my companion since the day she started. I believe hers is the longest running knitting podcast (Marie Irshard was the first, but sadly she no longer podcasts). Brenda is witty, intelligent, thought provoking, inspiring, creative, the list goes on.

So after this litany of why I love her, why am I saying darn her? It is her selection of music. Hers is the only podcast that features music I can bear to listen to. I generally hate music in podcasts (accept for Stuck in the '80s, duh). But Brenda's tastes are very similar to mine so I usually enjoy what she has to offer. Enter podcast 73, yeah I'm a bit behind. The show ended with a song by Jonathan Coulton called Code Monkey. I urge you not to click the link. Most definitely don't hit the Play the Song button. I will not be held responsible for the brain siezing power of this evil and malignant earworm. Since first hearing the song yesterday, I think I have listened to it, oh I don't know, 30 times. Maybe more. And, yes, it is playing now while I write this. This song totally rules.

Yarn drying with cat

2009-02-24T07:18:00.001-05:00

Very special yarn (merino/cashmere!) for a special project. Quinn was less than happy to have to give up her spot in front of the heater to make way for my yarn. At least she didn't choose to sleep ON the yarn!

MAP! and the Collection

2009-02-14T14:40:00.006-05:00

As promised, photos of the awesomest b-day present ever...the Marauder's MapFully opened it barely fits on my kitchen counterThere are little fold out maps on the inside All in all a fabulous collectors piece. A display case will be forthcoming.

My indie perfume obsession continues. My current collection comprises 6 boxes.Cigar boxes are my favorite place for storing bottles. It keeps them organized and out of the light. I painted the cardboard box (which I previously blogged about) but left the wooden one exactly as I found it. It was a $1 steal at the flea market last fall. My eyes are peeled for more like it. The drawback to storing these little bottles in boxes is that you cannot see the labels. I write the names on white caps with a fine point Sharpie and find that dot stickers from the office supply fit well on the caps that can't be written on. Is there a silver Sharpie out there? Must remember to look when I'm at the store again.

I love mint tins for storing samples as well as the little wooden chests I found I Michael's for $2. A splash of paint and they are perfectly charming perfume boxes.

The state of my soles

2009-02-14T13:48:00.005-05:00

Recently Dharmafey of Socks in the City did a video podcast on her socks and how they are fairing. Her podcasts normally center around sock yarns and sock knitting and I found it extremely interesting to see some of the socks she's knit and her her opinions on how the yarns held up. We are all so excited when we get the new sock yarns and knit socks, but we don't often go back and talk about them after the fact.

So yesterday when I was taking my dry socks off the drying rack and hanging up the newly washed ones, I took notice of how my handknit socks are holding up. And I was a bit surprised by what I saw. So today I pulled out all my handknit socks and lined them up in order of least shabby looking to most shabby looking.

First the ones that look the best.These are the yarns (From left to right) Mr Joe Blanket, Opal 6 ply, Lion Brand Sock-Ease, Regia Bamboo

These look pretty good, only a bit of fuzziness.Online Supersocke 6ply, Opal Petticoat Cotton, Handspun colonial wool, Lime & Violet Sasquatch

And finally, the really fuzzy shabby socks.Knit Picks Bare Gloss, Knit Picks Essentials, Knit Picks Bare Merino

The socks more or less all get worn about the same. The handspun socks don't get worn much because they are really warm, but I wear my other handknit socks quite often. I was shocked that the socks that looked the worst included my most recently finished pair of socks (the green and brown Knit Picks Essentials)These socks are only a few months old and look as bad as the purple Knit Picks socks that are several years old.

I was also very happy to see that the Opal socks are holding up so well (especially given they are the oldest socks pictured here!)They are not quite as soft and cozy as the KP socks. Maybe it's the nylon in them that keeps them nice looking but also makes them a bit stiffer. Opal is also about 3 times as expensive as KP yarns so perhaps there's something to be said for paying for quality.

Now, none of these socks has holes or spots that are uncomfortably worn. This is strictly an appearance thing. I love my KP socks and can handle the fuzziness. In my opinion, a bit of felting on the soles is not really a bad thing. And just for the record, all my socks are machine washed (cold, gentle cycle) and hung to dry on a drying rack. This goes for superwash and non-superwash yarns.

Pretty much the only thing I've been working on is the February Lady sweater. I finished the body a day or two ago and started the first sleeve last night.Isn't she pretty? I'm planning to wear it for Easter. Normally I do not like knitting lace. However, this has been an extremely enjoyable pattern to knit. It's a 4 row repeat, very easy to memorize. It also seems to knit up very quickly. Despite the fact it's been on my needles for months, when it's actually seeing the light of day it progresses quickly.

I swatched for my fair isle sweater and decided I was not going to like black for the background color. Webs was nice enough to change my order to dark grey and shipped the yarn right away. So now I've got my yarns but I'm trying not to look at them and fall victim to their siren song to cast on. Poor Jen still hasn't received the yarn for her FI even though she ordered before me! Even if it weren't for my need to finish my existing projects, I would wait for her out of solidarity, since she's the one who conned, I mean talked me into this.

One step closer...

2009-02-07T17:49:00.007-05:00

...to being able to start my fair isle sweater. A bunch of the yarn arrived this week from Webs.The colors are (from the top) light grey, dark grey, fawn, chestnut heather, pine, eggplant, dark navy and merlot heather. I'm stymied until the natural and black arrive from back order (expected the end of March). I do have some similar weight black and natural that I'm going to use to do some sample swatches with.

It's been ages since I spoke about spinning. I am indeed still spinning. My foot issues are pretty much resolved and I can treadle with two feet again. Here's what I've spun since I last posted handspun:

Hanks in the Hood merino wool in Cozy Stripes colorway. My first true fingering weight handspun.
CJ Kopec merino, bfl, silk blend in Cottage Rose colorway. Still find it difficult to spin with silk.
Ashland Bay merino in Sapphire colorway.
Pigeon Roof Studios Superwash BFL in the Nightshade colorway. This is only half the roving. I've given up on trying to squeeze 4 ounces of fiber on a bobbin. I've still got a ton of fiber to spin through, of course. Jen's trying to get me to spin for a sweater, but I'm not quite ready to commit to such a large amount of spinning just now. Maybe when my backlog of sweater knitting is a bit more under control!

My birthday turned out wonderful. Thanks to everyone who sent birthday wishes. I got two fabulous presents which I, unfortunately, don't have pictures of just now. My folks got me a darling little 4 cup coffee maker since I've recently developed an addiction to the stuff after a lifetime of tea drinking. And my sister gave me the ultimate present, a Marauder's Map. This thing is awesome. As you fold it out, you find different map views depending which folds are together. There are also little mini fold out maps inside. It's not a true map of Hogwarts, which is unfortunate. And much of the writing on it is jibberish repeated over and over. But the over all effect is grand. I love it. I will get pictures of it posted when I can.

It takes so little to make me happy

2009-02-02T12:47:00.003-05:00

So today is February 2. Groundhog day. The unofficial/official start to crazy tax time at work. Day before the birthday of doom. I wasn't exactly chuffed for a grand day and life has been serving up the crazy all morning.

Then, I came home for lunch and found my Woobie Valentines order arrived. Check out these awesome little bottles of scented goodness.Aren't they the cutest thing ever? The little cork stoppered one was a free sample and it leaked all over, but other than that I am just tickled. I love that they look like poison bottles. The Scorned Love scents even have the skull and cross bones. Squee. I'm so glad I opted for the 1/3 oz potion bottles rather than standard 5ml bottles. And I'm should also mention the scents (as always) are heavenly! The only drawback with getting a bunch of perfumes at one time is you can't sample them all at once! If you haven't checked out Penny's site, please do so. She's wonderful to deal with and has great products. And her prices are the best around. I'm sure I'll be going back and getting the rest of the V-day scents I was looking at, especially after seeing these gorgeous little bottles!

See, doesn't take much to make me happy.