Ooo shiney!

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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.