I made this:

(it's thick and thin on purpose)

and I'm knitting a lot

and I wish I had time to write

but I have to meet with 300 students over the course of three weeks so I'm a little swamped.

A Whole Bunch of Bag

It is sad to me that this will felt down to just about 14" tall, but it was still a pretty quick knit. Just the strap left to go!

Knitting Machine

No, I don't own a knitting machine, but I feel like one when I'm getting ready for craft fairs. This weekend, I finished five hats:


All of them are wool-blends and chunky: Paton's Shetland Chunky, Plymouth Encore Chunky, or two strands of Wool-Ease knitted together. I knitted while hanging out at Paula's, and while watching movies. The hat in the middle of the bottom row was finished during Finding Nemo, and the blue/natural striped during Ocean's Eleven. Maybe I'll start naming my finished products after the movies that I watch while completing them.

...Corrientes, Nueve de Julio...

So I went to the Folk Art Studio in Bowie last night with Paula and picked up a bunch of Rio de La Plata yarn. First of all, I think it's cool that the random link above that I found via google lists the yarn's wool content (Material: 100% Uruguayan Wool. Composition: 27 1/2 microns corriedale and 19 1/2 microns merino). Second, it's great to knit with! It's very soft, especially after working almost exclusively with LP Bulky. The colors are nice -- I'm using a variegated, and it created an interesting stripe pattern on the hat that I just finished. Kathy at Folk Art Studio likens it to Manos, but I've never knitted with Manos, so I can't provide reference there, but I do recommend it, for those of you who can get to Bowie or otherwise find it. One skein was 140 yards and $13, which seemed reasonable for a soft, hand-spun, variegated-dye wool.

Oh yeah, and it makes me sing the song "Buenos Aires" from Evita. Hence the title of the post.

time to kill

I'm at work, waiting for an email merge to finish (Word has merged 1099 records so far!) and hoping that typing up an entry doesn't crash the whole system. I've been getting the Blue Screen of Death a lot lately at work, and I don't even have that much of interest on this computer, since it belongs to the school and all.

I missed the knitting meetup last night because a) I'm getting over a cold; b) it was rainy and nasty outside; and c) the West Wing premiere was on. Happily, the show wasn't awful -- I have high hopes that it'll get better before it's taken off the air (which I imagine will be soon) -- season five just wasn't very good, overall, but I will remain optimistic for six.

I am knitting for another craft fair. Sigh. My poor, neglected Top Secret sweater. I've also been doing a little bit of the holiday knitting, but not at the rate that I should. I had a little misadventure in felting the other night. I finished three projects, a hat, a small bag, and a wine tote, all ready for felting. Threw 'em in the washer, and didn't pay enough attention to them, apparently. The hat was supposed to be grown-up sized, and instead may fit a 6 year old, and the wine tote will only hold a bottle of Reisling. I knitted the bag with DK weight and novely yarn held together, and it didn't felt as tightly as I was expecting, so it's a little bigger and floppier than planned. Hm. Hopefully, prospective buyers will like these qualities in my slightly dysfunctional felted items.

I am the only person on livejournal who lists felted knits as an interest.

an update and a quiz

Looks like I'm craft fair knitting again -- I've finished two bags and a hat this week, all of them inspired by tweaking patterns from Felted Knits. A couple more wine cozies and I'll at least feel like I have a bit of inventory. I'm also going to knit and felt a bag to hold my Scrabble tiles for an upcoming Scrabble tournament. I've been longing for a bag with a flat bottom, and it shouldn't take too long. I may even do the drawstring rows in a non-felting wool, so that the bag will close snugly, but we'll see if I get that motivated.


You appear to be a Knitting Guru. You love knitting
and do it all the time. While finishing a piece
is the plan, you still love the process, and
can't imagine a day going by without giving
some time to your yarn. Packing for vacation
involves leaving ample space for the stash and
supplies. It can be hard to tell where the yarn
ends and you begin.


What Kind of Knitter Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

success!

I had a lot of fun at the craft fair, and lots of positive reinforcement for my knitting. I really love it, and definitely knit too much to just gift all of my friends, so making a bit of cash on the side is a welcome opportunity. I think the wheel even managed to pay for itself a bit. We were invited to a gala event in a month or so, and are considering doing it, although I'm not sure how well that'll mesh with holiday knitting. Lots of fast and fluffy scarves in my future, I think, and I want to do some stocking caps.

It's nice to be back on my sweater again. I finished the body while sitting and knitting at the fair, and am working my way up one sleeve, in the round. I cast on 54 stitches, and will decrease down to the called-for 48, because I decided that I wanted bell sleeves. These things are huge. Fun, though, I hope, once they're done.

Off to a conference in Cincinnati tomorrow, which means lots of time to knit in the airport!

checklist

Things I have left to do for the craft fair (off the top of my head):
-come up with a design concept for the booth
-make some bag/hat racks
-label and price painted yarns and knitted items
-stuff and sew mice
-make an inventory of what I'm selling, so I can track what sells
-finish a few hats and bags
-write up small bag pattern
-put together and write up 100 yd hat pattern (kid size of some variety)
-xerox patterns
-figure out how much to charge for handspun
-make labels for handspun
-get a bunch of small bills and change
-make signs or other eye catching display items for the booth

What I've made:
-4 wine totes
-5 or so felted bags
-3 dozen hand-dyed 100 yard skeins
-6 or so hats
-20 catnip mice
-a dozen or so dishcloths
-3 scarves

What else I'd like to make (in the next week - ha):
-small felted bags
-hats
-skeins of handspun

early!

Nothing like getting to work at 7:30 to give you time to update and surf the Internet. My brain isn't awake enough to do much else quite yet.

Went to The Folk Art Studio in Bowie last night (and look! it has a webpage now!) for bulky Lamp's Pride and a kiwi bubble milk tea, complete with whipped cream and green bubbles. Mmm, my favorite variety of "green tea." I purchased a skein each of dark green and pink LP to go with my various purples and a pair of size 11 16" circulars. I am 16" into my third wine cozy, and I think I'll try my hand at Nalgene holders next. I also did a thorough search of my house and have found seven ready-to-felt mice. I almost put them back in their hiding places to see if they would multiply more extensively -- I could've sworn I'd only knitted three or so.

I'm in the process of designing labels for my yarn skeins. A rough picture:


Modeled after business cards I ordered:


Thoughts? Comments?

Craft Fair Countdown

First, big thanks to Paula for my fabulous birthday present! It's featured here and is so wonderful!

I'm knitting like a crazy person for the craft fair:


Saturday, October 2, 2004, 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Columbia Heights Market Place at 14th & Irving Streets.

I've done a bunch of mice recently, and two felted wine totes. I have to pick up more bulky feltable yarns, since everything I have left at this point is purple, and none of the purples really go together as well as they could.

I have also been dyeing. An insane amount of dyeing. I now have 3 dozen brightly colored (and fruity smelling) 100-yard-ish skeins of wool. Half of them have been bundled up and are ready to go, and the rest I'm probably going to have to rinse again, to try to at least mellow out the kool aid scentedness.

How much would you pay for 100-ish yards of one-of-a-kind, feltable yarn, which will come with a free pattern that I made up?

Tonight is the meetup, but I don't know if I'll make it. I may go out to Bowie's Folk Art Studio and grab some more Lamb's Pride, and a kiwi bubble tea.

I'm still daydreaming about the post-fair knitting. I now have 7 balls of Aurora 8 - two lime green, one forest green, and four eggplant. I don't know what they'll be, but they're so pretty and soft...

the perfect work bag

Just one of the many projects that's on hold until after the craft fair (the afghan is the other big one that I can't wait to start). I've been conceptualizing a work bag in my head for a couple of months now. It all began when I realized that my current bag is a) too heavy; b) boring and black; c) dressed with too many pockets that aren't suiting my needs.

My perfect work bag will be a felted bag, probably striped, but possibly just with different blocks of colors. It will not be variegated, I don't think. It will probably at least complement my lunch bag (which is also the Fiona bag), which is burgundy with a black trim.

It will need to hold the following: altoids, keys, planner, clipboard, wallet, mp3 player, glasses/sunglasses, a knitting project, with room for other incidental things.

It will probably have a specially-sized mp3 player pocket, plus a front pouch pocket, and a big middle compartment.

It will probably not be knitted in Lamb's Pride, since it's got the mohair halo thing going. It will probably be worsted weight. Maybe I'll try Cascade, since I've still never knitted in it.

Someday, I will knit for myself again, and not for the craft fair.

In other news, the knitting circle that I'm starting up at my campus (UMBC) begins next Friday. I can't wait.

hat madness

I have a big head, as heads go, and I think that it makes me automatically knit big hats. I just finished a hat with Takhi Baby that's even too big for me, which means I know it won't fit most of the populace. I'm hoping to felt it just a little bit, and call it normally-sized.

I have also done quite a lot of Kool-Aid dyeing recently:


All of the skeins are right around 100 yards, and will go into felted bag kits for the craft fair. Me, my giant bottle of vinegar, and my packs of Kool Aid have been banished to the basement and an extra microwave, as the smell gets a little overwhelming.

Sweater Progress

With the help of a meetup.com gathering, and a Knitting-N-the-City yarn swap night, I've made a little progress on the Knitty Top Secret Sweater:



I guess it's striping a little, but I don't really notice it while knitting or looking at the actual sweater as much as I do looking at those pictures. I should really be doing more craft fair stuff than sweater stuff right now, though...

tank girl

I had a lovely time at the meetup.com knitting night last night at Mayorga, and again suffered the guilt of ignoring my little blog. Big projects right now are gearing up for a potential craft fair in DC, and the continued card-spin-knit sort of yarn. I have a huge bag of fleece hanging out in the living room, and I am fascinated by the metamorphosis that the wool takes. So far, the yarn has been full of burrs, because I'm lazy and don't work that hard to get them out of the fluff, but the colors are lovely, and I like the feel of the natural sheepy oils on my hands.

In the world of knitting, the Berella sweater is coming along, as are a multitude of scarves and other smaller projects. Here's the finished tank, now that I remembered to take a picture of it:


I'm pretty pleased with it, especially since I was making up my pattern as I went along once I hit the neck.

new york bound

Life is busy. I have been away from home for the past two weekends (moving someone to NYC, tanning in Ocean City), and will be away again this weekend, moving another someone around in NYC. To this end, I have started a car-worthy knitting project. I'm knitting a variation on Knitty's Top Secret (the link's in the sidebar - I'm too lazy to html it again), with Berella Polar in Aqua/Sage/Denim. I've knit up hats in the yarn before, and it's quick, springily-textured, washable, and not too itchy. I swatched the thing on 10 1/2s straight, and the gauge was around 2.75 st/in, so I revised the pattern around that gauge and cast on 114 stitches, which would've been equivalent to the diameter of the pattern at a 36" bust. After a couple of inches on knitting in the round, I checked the gauge and it magically changed to 3 st/in, so rather than rip it and restart, I re-engineered it again to be a straight body rather than a-line. It'll still be lovely. I'm especially pleased to have a sweater with bell sleeves.

Am also knitting for a craft fair, and am back to working up some felted catnip mice. I inherited two fleeces from a friend of mine, and have also borrowed her combs and cards, so I can experiment with carding and spinning, and then working up mice, which are felted and don't have to be soft, so it's a nice combination. There are still 2 pounds of Finn to dye in my living room. If I'm ever around for a weekend, I'll get to that as well.

I miss knitting with people. I will have to make it to a local group some time soon.

I've been so busy knitting and spinning

...that I have neglected my blog. I have also been out of my office for much of the past two weeks, so I haven't been sitting at a computer where posting was easy. But, I finished a scarf and a tank top, plus the edging on Charlotte (she just needs blocking now). I've spun about 500 yards since my last post, and did a bunch of dyeing this weekend, so I'm good for roving for awhile.

While dyeing my merino, I think I lightly felted it. I spun a bit this morning, and it's harder to pull off the roving than it usually is. In some ways, this is nice -- I'm less likely to let it get pulled out of my hands and break. This also makes it easier to overspin, though, as I never stop moving my foot as I pull at the roving. I'm learning to compensate for it, however, so things are getting smoother now that I'm halfway through an ounce or so. I also spun up some sport weight last night. I usually spin at a heavy worsted weight once the singles are plied, so it was exciting to find out that I can, in fact, spin more thinly when I choose to. Oh, it's also official now -- I wrote a check, and the wheel is mine!

Here's the scarf that I just finished. I bought two skeins of green that I thought would be a matching dyelot, but they were not, so I had to switch back and forth between skeins every two rows to even it out. It's a little too scratchy for me to wear, but it was fun to knit on someone else's handspun. I bought the yarn right before I got the wheel.

still not quite fixed

So, I was trying to use blogger's comment engine rather than haloscan's, and that's where my problems with html kicked in. I still don't have everything back the way I wanted it, but I prefer this comment program thingie. I do have all of your comments over at Haloscan, too, but from now on, Blogger (when it's working) will email me any new comments, and that makes me happy.

Enough of that boring stuff. Today was a good day for fiber fun down in Alexandria. Paula and I made the pilgrimage to VA today, equipped with her birthday money, and cash that I procured from a recent amazon.com book selling. We started at Springwater Fiber Workshop, and I think we'll be taking a class down there at some point as well. We both picked up roving, generally enjoyed fondling things, and got intimidated by the idea of real (chemical) dyes. I bought 8 oz. of natural colored merino, which I will dye eventually, plus a couple of ounces each of navy Corriedale and purple merino/tencel. I've been wanting to try tencel for awhile, since I really enjoy wearing it. Of course, I don't have enough to make anything wearable with whatever I spin; I'll consider that commitment down the road. Less than $20 for 12 ounces of wool, which will make a sweater's worth of yarn. I love spinning.

After a lunch break to refresh and re-energize, we headed over to Knit Happens, which is spacious and bright and full of fabulous people. I appreciate the amount of space they have, for sitting, for looking around, and for displaying the yarns. The book selection was good, as was the yarn selection, and we quite enjoyed the armchairs. I only wish it were a little closer.

Came back to my house and did some easter egg dye coloring (over-dyeing some very kool-aid red roving, and some white), wound up a bunch of mohair/nylon/wool boucle (I think it'll be a shawl someday), and watched Paula spin for a bit. I'm not sure what I think about easter egg dyes. I'm guessing my dye-vinegar-water ratios were off, because the dye wasn't sticking very well. I think I microwaved 4 oz of Border Leicester for about half an hour (in 2 minute increments) before it was even starting to take the dye. We'll see how it spins up. I do like the colors a lot better than kool-aid, though.

I'm in the home stretch on my socks, and 8" into my tank sweater. We rented LOTR: Return of the King, which should give me a few good hours of knittable television time.

test

I think I broke my code.

Easter Egg Yarn!

I just found out tht you can dye wool with easter egg dye! I'm not sure why this didn't dawn on me earlier, but it didn't. I have lots of leftover dyes that I bought on sale this year, so after going to VA for a wool shopping trip, I will be lining my kitchen with paper towels and playing with some new colors!

i made this

As promised, I have knitted things from my handspun yarn before deciding to buy the spinning wheel. I am now more confident that it would be a sound investment. The scarf and mittens are made solely of yarn that I've spun in the past couple of months, some of which I also dyed:


The scarf is knitted horizontally on a size 11 circular (without joining the ends). I casted on 150 stitches, and the finished scarf is about 60", unblocked. I may block it later if I get inspired. It's mostly garter stitch, with a few rows of stockinette thrown in here and there when I got bored with the knit stitch and felt like purling for awhile.



The mittens are actually convertible, although you can't tell from this picture. They were knit on size 6 dpns, and then lightly fulled to give them a little more structure (and shrink them a bit, 'cause they were huge). I adapted the pattern from the gauntlets in Sally Melville's Purl Stitch book, but mostly I made it up as I went along. I started the mittens on Saturday and finished on Monday. My hands were a little numb from working that continuously.

I'm currently coveting Paradise Fibers' rhapsodies. They will definitely be on my holiday shopping list.