Monthly Archives: July 2008

Finishing

Posted on by

Shirt & Sock

I really have meant to post mmore this week but I just haven’t had a chance.  Here’s what I’ve spent most of my week on (I did some spinning Monday).  I thought this shirt would come together a little faster but my inexperience with sewing clothes plus an unfamiliar fabric equals a lot more time sewing than I had bargined on.  But I did a couple things for the first time like sewing sleeves and gathering and that made the extra time worth it.  The pattern is Simplicity 3751, the fabric is cotton gauze with silver stripes that I got a Joanne’s.  I do plan on making another of these shirts, in fact, I think I’ll go some time next week and get the fabric for it and make the longer sleeved version.  I had a brief moment of panic when I tried the top on, that it’s not going to fit feeling, but it’s actually perfect.  My only compliant is that it’s lower in the back than I like but the fabric is pretty thin so I’ll have to wear a tank under it anyway, so I’m not worried about it.  I don’t think I could have picked a better pattern fro my first shirt, it was really easy and the end result is great.  I’ll try to get a picture of it on me either tomorrow or Monday.

The sock is my first Jacaranda that I finished last night.  What can I say about this sock?  It’s great and I’ve already started the second.  They’re going to be really warm and cozy this winter.

I’m babysitting tomorrow and we might go to a movie so i don’t know if I’ll get to post or not, not that I really have anything else to post about.

A Little Catch Up

Posted on by

Tour de Fleece Round Up

I feel like I have a lot of stuff that I want to post about, I just can’t think of what to say.  So here’s a quick little update on what I’ve been doing lately.  First up, this is all the spinning I did during the Tour de Fleece this year.  There’s some sock yarn, thick and thin singles, a couple corespun, some thread plied, natural colored fingering weight, and my blue Cotswold.  I had so much fun spinning for the Tour and I really hope I can keep the momentum up for a while.

Today's Spinning

I spun this today, it’s almost 200yds of worsted to bulky thick and thin singles that is a lot like the second yarn from the left above.  I have a plan for this yarn but it’s something that I’m not even going to start on for a couple months and I haven’t fleshed it out yet.  I think I’ll use it for the yoke of a top down raglan with a solid colored yarn for the body and sleeves.  I got the idea from Spin to Knit by Shannon Okey.  I haven’t decided on a color for the body yet, I was thinking about a blue or dark brown since those colors are used in the yarn.  I don’t think I’ll start it until later this year, so I’m not in any hurry to decide.

Jacaranda Socks

I decided to frog my Hydrangea socks the other day.  The yarn and pattern just weren’t working together, the fabric was too thick and stiff and i don’t think the socks would have been very comfortable.  This is the Jacaranda sock from the same book, The Eclectic Sole by Janel Laidman, as the Hydrangeas.  I love this book.  This pattern is working out much better, the fabric is nice and loose and soft and I love the texture and slight laciness of it.  This picture doesn’t even come close to the color of the yarn, it’s a richer darker red with subtle shading, not purple.

I got happy mail today.  I impulse bought these earrings on Etsy last week after I saw them on another blog.  I didn’t bother to take my own picture because they look exactly like the picture in the listing.  They’re beautiful and they weigh nothing.  I’m thinking about ordering another pair.

That’s it for today!  Tomorrow, books and sewing.

Six

Posted on by

Wordle

My internet access has been out most of the evening and I almost forgot to post.  Today’s marks six years of blogging here and, no, I never thought I would still be doing it after this long.  The image is from Wordle, it’s random words pulled from my RSS feed, a fun little toy.  Real post tomorrow!

Spinning & Socks

Posted on by

More TdF Spinning

I’m still spinning every day but it feels like I’m not making any progress on this Cotswold.  I’ve plied my first two bobbins of singles and I have one more that’s full and one that’s just about full, so I just need to finish up that second bobbin and then I can do more plying.  I need to wind this yarn off and see how my yardage is and then decide what I’m going to make, this yarn is promised to my mom.  I’m happy with how the yarn is coming out so far, it’s soft and light and fluffy, I wish it was a little more consistent but there’s a little bit of grease on some of the roving which is making it hard to draft evenly.  It should all even out in the end, though, so I’m not worried about it.

Sock in Progress

On the knitting front, since progress is so slow on Irtfa’a, it’s taking about 30 mintues to knit a row now, I decided to cast on a sock.  I spun this yarn up a while back but never put it on Etsy so I decided to keep it.  The color here isn’t exact, it’s close, the real yarn is a little darker, but still very cranberry.  The pattern is Hydrangea from The Eclectic Sole by Janel Laidman.  I’m not sure how I feel about this sock yet, I like the pattern and I like the yarn, I’m just not sure how I like them together, and the cuff just isn’t long enough yet for me to decide.  So I guess I’ll knit on it until I start the heel and then decide how I feel about it.

This morning I about had a heart attack.  A storm woke me up early and when it was over and I booted up my computer and Windows didn’t recognize my password.  I tried five or six times to log in under my username, as owner, admin, user, anything I could think of and it just wouldn’t work.  I used my recovery disk (I’m so happy I thought to make that) to try to get into system restore but all my restore points were gone.  I looked around on Google to try to figure out what to do for two hours and all I could think of was that I was going to have to reinstall Windows and that I’d loose all my documents (and all my paperwork for KnitPicks) and music and pictures, I was so upset.  I finally tried one more time to log in, this time as Owner (with a capital O) and it worked.  I can’t remember the last time I felt so relieved.  I was able to restore a back up of my registry that I happened to make yesterday (!) and that has all my problems sorted out, I did a registry clean up yesterday and I guess the program that I used (nCleaner) did too good of a job deleting registry items.  Now, I’m no stranger to mucking around and changing and deleting stuff in the Windows registry but just because of what happened to me, I can’t recommend this program.  I figure that if someone who screws around with Windows as much as I do messed things up that bad, the someone who doesn’t know anything about Windows would do even worse.  I still say that if my modem would work with Ubuntu, I’d install that.  Ugh, I hate Windows.

Anyway, geeky digression over, the rest of the week holds more spinning, more sock knitting, and maybe I’ll finally get around to taking a picture of Irtfa’a.

Weekend Spinning

Posted on by

Cotswold

I’m babysitting my cousin and she’s in zombie mode in front of the TV right now, so I’m sneaking and blogging before I have to start entertaining her again.  This is my spinning from this weekend.  It’s a few ounces (I don’t know exactly how much) of my pretty blue Cotswold.  I’m spinning it to about a worsted weight.  I’ve already plied these two bobbins and started another bobbin of singles, I just didn’t get a picture of them yet.  The yarn is very loft and soft and light.  I have about of pound of this fiber so I should be able to make something big, like a vest or a cardi, for my mom (since she bought the fiber).  I’ll be spinning up some more of this this week, I want to get at least eight ounces spun by the end of the week.

My current Knit Picks project is totally finished and ready to be shipped off.  This was a fun little project that is going to be in the next catalog and I can’t wait to show it off.

I’ll also try to get some Irtfa’a pictures this week.  I need to get some blocking wires.