A Pretty Neat Trade!

I hinted in my last post about trading some Mary Maxim kits and a good chunk of my acrylic stash. I traded it for a knitting machine! A Bond Elite to be precise.

Last night hubby helped me set it up and I stayed up til 2am using it. In 4 hours I got it set up, cast on 120 stitches and knitted 70 rows. But I kept dropping stitches and I could not get the hang of it so I ripped everything out and went to bed.

I spent a good portion of today getting used to the machine. I have knitted 325 rows, 120 stitches each. I have been using my dwindling acrylic stash to practice with and am making a particularly ugly striped blanket. It is so much fun!

You have to push this thing across this other thing (pretty technical huh) and you have to do it smoothly and slowly. You also have to keep slack on the working yarn. The acrylic I am using is very rough and it keeps snagging on everything so I haven't been doing a good job keeping it slack. I keep losing stitches on the edges. But it is happening less frequetly and I am getting faster at fixing it.

Well, I had better get back to my little experiment...

Cali

Its a new year.

Happy New Year Everyone!

I have been setting myself annual goals and tracking them on my Ravelry profile page. I achieved success in about half of last years goals. This year my goals are:

1. Make me a sweater.
2. Finish my sampler skirt.
3. Finish a lace project.
4. Finish the Harry Potter Scarf.
5. Make 4 Mother Bear Project Bears.
6. Sell/Trade the Mary Maxim Cat Afghan and Rug kits.
7. Blog at least twice per month.

So since January is more than half over I thought I better get a blog done or I will have failed my blogging goal before the first month is even over. I have already successfully completed one goal; trading the Mary maxim cat kits. I traded them for something really cool, but I will save that for my next blog post.

I have been working pretty steadily on my sampler skirt, it looks like I will need 1 skein of sock yarn per gore so I picked 4 more skiens out of my stash. Right now I am working on the second gore and doing it in the CCR colourway. I am absolutely thrilled with the results so far but it is an awful lot of brainless knitting.

The exciting part of this blog: NEW YARN! I bought my first handspun this month. I bought a beautiful 2-ply merino from SeeJayneKnit. It has shades of brown and gold with a bit of teal. Beautiful!

I also bought some single ply corriedale handspun from another etsy seller, MySweetSpot2. She listed a fabulous auction of 5 skeins that all coordinate, 2 multi coloured and 3 solid coloured. I just love these yarns! I have been stalking her shop looking for more of these sets.

While surfing, I stumbled across a neat yarn club. It is a sample club for the Elann.Com clearance yarns. Every month they send you a small sample of the yarns they will be clearing out plus little snips of all the different colourways. I received my samples yesterday. They are so cute! I am determined to figure out some kind of teeny project to make them into, There is about 20grams of yarn total so I cant do much with it, I am thinking maybe a coffee cup sleeve, or maybe saving several months worth and making a crazy scarf...

The fuzzy dead-muppet yarn is soft but I cant imagine ever wanting to knit something out of it, the tweedy looking one has a sparkly strand of lame in it so it is quite pretty, the dark brown yarn is a beautiful merino and the yellow is cotton blend. None of these are really calling out to me to buy so I think my credit card will be safe in February.

'til next time...

Cali

A Very White Christmas!

Happy Holidays! We have had an awful lot of snow this year. So much that all my holiday plans have been delayed and we didn't leave our home for 4 days due to all the snow. But on the brighter side; our dog, Jack, loves this snow!

I did find the time to start a big project I had been planning. It will be an ankle length skirt; the main part will be in custom dyed black yarn that Shannon dyed for me and then I plan to do 8 large gores in 4 different skiens of Shannon's Shiraz sock yarn. You can see the project and my notes on Ravelry. I have done the gauge swatches, first section and am currently working on the first gore. I am using the Taelyn's Toybox colourway and I just love it! The colours are so bright.

I decorated a cute knitting notions tin today. I am quite happy with the way it turned out. I also put some matching stickers on my ruler to coordinate it.

I am going to get back to knitting now, eh-hem... I mean homework...

Cali

Fibre Baby Beautiful

Hello Hello!

I have finally completed my Fibre Baby accessories! Woohoo! I bought some beautful hand spun, hand dyed alpaca yarn at Gibsons Fibre Festival a few months ago, I named the yarn my Fibre Baby. Within a week of getting home I made a scarf from it. The scarf is a 2x2 rib and is about 3 inches wide by 12 feet long. It is so cute! I had a little bit of yarn laft over so I thought I would use it as trim for a pair of matching mittens and a hat. I asked Shannon to dye some BFL to match the alpaca so I could make the hat and Mitts. I finished the mitts last weekend and finished the hat yesterday. They are so cute, and very, very pink:

I found the neatest new stitch markers on Etsy. The seller is Crimson Orchid. Her prices are great and the markers are beautiful, each set comes on a coordinating wire holder to keep it all organized and tidy. The holder speaks to the OCD in me in the most fabulous way.

I am going to be helping Shannon sell her yarn at the Winter Market tomorrow. I am really looking forward to being warm and cozy indoors. It will be a nice change from the outdoor farmers market. I am hoping to maybe find some neat Christmas Gifts...

Cali

I am a Designer!

I did it! I wrote my first pattern and listed it for free on Ravelry. It is a cute and cozy pet bed. It is also a fabulous stash buster. I have made 4 beds and used up a significant 4,000 yards of the acrylic and eyelash yarn that invaded my house not too long ago.

I have had a severe case of startitis lately. I want to make my first Baby Surprise Jacket and I want to make a scarf from malabrigo eaither in a moss knit stitch or a mesh crochet stitch; I haven't decided yet. I haven't picked up my cabled sock since I got home from Gibsons or my drop stitch scarf since I got home from Port McNeill. I did finish my second ever pair of socks and a cute pair of slippers though.

Right now my main focus is to finish a pair of socks I promised my co-worker for her son. I almost have the leg done on the first pair. I am doing it in a twisted rib but I have made several mistakes. I keep telling myself that he is 10 and wont care but the urge to rip it out and start over keeps getting stronger.

Amongst all this knitting and crocheting I have even managed to get all my homework done. At the last minute of course but done with an average of 78%. So I am quite pleased. I suppose I should probably go work on it now...

Cali

Road Trip = 12 hours of guilt-free knitting

Last weekend we packed up the car and my husband, dog and I all went to visit my parents in Port McNeill. McNeill is a teeny tiny town on the north end of Vancouver Island. I graduated from the highschool there and dont get back to visit too often. Its been about 3 years since my last visit but everything was still the same.

One of the best things about a road trip is all the knitting time I get. 2 hours each way on the ferry and 4 hours each way driving. That is 12 hours! I didn't make the best use of this time as I did nap a little but I still got about a foot of my latest project knitted.

I am making a drop stitch stole, I have never done a dropped stitch before (at least not on purpose) so it took a few tries to get the hang of it. First I had to wind my yarn into a ball. I picked a pretty purple, black and green yarn that I got from my Unwind Yarns Sock Club. I love these colours. I think they will match my new jacket quite nicely. Then I started knitting. The drop stitch was pretty easy and the pattern didn't take long to memorize. I am a little unsure how it is going to turn out though. I think it will take some severe blocking before it looks good.

The visit with my parents was good. We took my dog, Jack, to the beach. He has never seen the ocean before. He was afraid of the crashing waves at first. It was so funny to see such a huge dog (120 lbs) backing away with his tail between his legs. It didn't take long before he was fetching every stick and log my dad threw into the water for him. It was so cute to watch my parents and Jack playing together.

But every holiday has to end and now we are back home...

Cali

Sigh... Yarn... Sigh... School...

Well, I have had a few wonderful, fibreful days.

My good friend Shannon is having a sale on her website, 30% off all yarn if you type in the coupon code SCHOOL (ends Sept 14). So I had to buy a bunch more yarn, 'cause, well, sale.





I tried my hand at making my own stitch markers. They turned out all right. Not perfect but not bad for my first attempt. I got the beads at Gibsons Fibre Festival. Aren't the little ladybugs too cute?





Then yesterday was Unwind Yarns debut selling yarn at the Coquitlam Farmer's Market. So I went to help her sell yarn. It was so much fun. The atmosphere at the market is just fabulous. There were so many dogs there. It seems to be the place to bring your dog.



Tonight I went to Monday Knit Night at Black Sheep Yarns. What fun! There was at least 16 of us there. The store is beautiful. I finally got on the Malabrigo Wagon and brought home 3 skeins of laceweight to match my new kiwi green Stormtech jacket.

But now, I really need to stop procrastinating and do some school work. I started a course this semester: Advanced Corporate Finance. It is my third-to-last CGA course towards my designation. It is an awfully scary, hard course, so I have been distracting myself with all the wonderful fibre-y-ness but I suppose I should start reading that horribly boring no-pictures-no-colour text book...

Sigh...

Cali