Lovely longies

Holy crap. Knitting content.

STATS:

Pattern: Picky Pants

Size: Small with backside increases and extended short rows: 9 inch inseam

Yarn: Cascade 220 Tweed

I LOVE these. Too bad they are not for us. These are for my neice (to go with the greenish pair). I barely squeeked by on yardage. I had enough when I was done to tidy up the crotch a bit and have maybe 3 inches left. In fact the first leg had a picot hem (thank heavens I didn't seam it up yet!) and when I got done with the second leg I barely made it to 9 inches and still needed to bind off. So I undid the first leg and snuck away two rounds and voila! I so want these. I tried them on my wee one and they looked cute on her (and she's much larger so they fit more snugly) so I'm sure they are going to be oh so sweet on my neice.

I need some Cascade Tweed.

My fiber gots bling

:)

Oh yeah. My glitz is finally showing up. Subtle yet there. I'm liking it. Not sure I'm liking the fiber itself (kind of rough and prone to breaking) but oh well. I went on a spinning spree a bit ago and got quite a bit of this done and then had to park it. It's been sitting on our fireplace mantle staring me down. I got a chance to take a pic so I did. I've been browsing the spindle forums on Ravely and am now very inspired. Too bad my kitchen needs cleaned and my fmaily needs fed....priorities right?

So excited!

Ok I have some knitting content but for today we'll skip it.

The reason for my excitement? My etsy store (A Sleeping Spindle) is now stocked and running! Ok it's been somewhat stocked since Augustish but only with 3 things. When the husbeast went on his last business trip I got some more stuff done up and just got it added so I have a decent amount of things on there now! Someone even "hearts me" on there.

CLICKIE!

So go take a look around. Totally open to customs and/or suggestions.

Sock it to me!

Last night, as the wee ones settled into bed, I decided to start spinning instead of working on Feb. Lady. Naturally. When do I ever actually work on what I blog about. :) These are some sock bats from Freyalyn over on etsy. This is her sockstuff with glitz. These were part of my fiber swap. It's 100g. of 80% wool/ 20% nylon. I was waiting for my mom to replace the drive band on her spinning wheel so I could spin this up faster than I actually can but it doesn't seem to be happening. So I pulled it out last night. First impression is so-so. I started at the bottom with some red (I'm planning on bouncing back and forth between the ends so so far I've done some red and some of the greeny color that you can hardly see in the pic.) and colorwise it spins up GORGEOUSLY. That is soe seriously lovely red. I know. I love red. This is a good red. All the colors (well the two I've done so far) are nice and saturated. I have yet to notice any of the glitz. You can see it in the bat but once you start spinning it sort of dissapears. Not sure if it was just my lighting or the amount of glitz I've grabbed so far or what. If I were to hand this off to someone and say there was glitz in there though they might think I was lying. The fiber is rough. Not, "Woah! I won't wear that!" but more of a.....tweedy. Comforting rough. Make sense? Probably not. I can't feel the twist move up the fiber as I spin either. Now I tend to over spin and can really feel it move up the entire length as I go. I know I was overspinning last night but I wasn't able to feel it. Now this is not a problem really. It just means I need to pay attention to it to make sure my twist is getting up there before I roll it on to my cop. Sort of irritating to me. I like to mindlessly spin. I tend to spin while watching movies because I don't have to pay attention to it if I don't want to. I can feel the work getting done and that's good enough for me. Not so much with this. That's ok though. I'm hoping it was jsut a fluke thing last night. I can't wait to finish up the first 2 bats (2 per skein) and ply. I'm debating how to ply. I think I'll do a two ply and start at opposite ends. So a red end on the first ply and then ply that to the purple color on the end of the second ply. Make sense? Probably not. :)

It's genetic...

and I should give credit where credit is due. At least that's what my dad said the other night when I proudly proclaimed my cleverness with the craftiness. :)

First up is some yarn I dyed recently. This is some of my licorice twist from Catnip Yarns. To say I was dissapointed in it the first time around would be true. To say that again this time around would be a gross understatement. For the unaware licorice twist has a strand/ply that holds dye darker than the rest. Little Turtle Knits has some gorgeous skeins of it. I bought this undyed so I could play around and get results that, while not exactly like LTK, would remind me of them. I have yet to get that. The ply that holds darker hardly holds it. In fact unless you hold this up to your eye you cannot see most colors. I am able to see it more on the red but other than that it's a trick to see it. I have now done 7 colors (pink, green [the first two skeins of this], goldish, orange-red, red, purple, and navy blue) and the only time it's been a noticeable difference is on the red. I'm very ornry about it all. Overall though I LOVE how this skein turned out. I originally was only going to do the gold, red, and blue (which was actually supposed to be a purply color) but after I dumped the gold/yellow color in I thought doing some transition colors would be a good idea. So I mixed the yellow and red and then the red and blue. I was hoping to create smoother transitions. I haven't started knitting with it yet but have some plans for it. I did a huge amount so that I could do longies but I'm not sure I did enough. We shall see.

And here we have proof I really am working on the Feb. Lady Sweater. I finished up the second arm this morning. Well I finished up the redo of the first arm. It looks like I'm doing the shortest arm length out of everyone on Ravelry and what not. I'm still up in the air about this. The original reason was due to laziness...I just didn't want to do long arms since I wanted to be able to hurry and get this done with (ha! This has proved to be a long project). I asked the husband today as he snapped the bottom pic what he thought and while he wasn't announcing his absolute love and adoration at the state of my sleeves he didn't say they were bad either. I did 10 repeats and then 2 garter ridges (3 technically if you count my bind off). I was browsing through the ones on Ravelry and saw someone mention they decreased out the picked up stitches. I tried it out on the second sleeve and loved it which is why I redid the first arm. I decreased every round down to the original 56 stitches. I just k2tog on every one so I think it only took 4ish rounds...maybe 5. On the last round I k3tog. I didn't write it down so I can't be sure. The sleeves are not the same but I was too lazy to care by the time I noticed. The first lace repeat (the one done before you section off the sleeves) is off to the side. I'm not sure how it happened but as I was counting up my repeats to see how many repeats I had left I noticed it looked off. Being the optimist, I've decided it's that first repeat that is off and not the remaining 9. :) I'm ok with it. Once on you can't really tell and since the yarn is black it's even harder to see. It's just me and the wee ones home this weekend so I'm going to be working on this...I might work on a sock as well but my focus is going to be this. All I have left to do is the body and it should be easy enough to whip out some decent length

Hot diggity dog!

As of midnight last night I have finally finished the blasted swatches for the TKGA's master handknitters program! I am working on bloking them (no pics right now sorry!) and then onto the written part and then a simple hat! WOO HOO!!!!

Hey look! A non-yarn FO!

And no mention of fiber either! (unless you count that one :) )

A little bit ago my sister sent me a box with some yarn in it. she had attempted to learn to knit but in the end it just wasn't for her. So she sent me her supplies and asked that I finish up the pair she started and then make a second pair. So I said sure. So here they are.

Stats:

Unknown heathered yarn (the color is NOT true in the pictures)

Elastic wasitband

Increases and short rows (size small)

Picot cuff

7 inch inseam

I'll be adding a couple stars on there somewhere, to liven it up a bit. Although I do like them as is. I tried them on the hulky wee one and they fit so these will definitely fit her wee one...with some room to grow. The second pair is in a red tweedy yarn (again unknown brand). I love it so far. Nice and smooth. I'm already past the wasitband and increases (same format as the pair above). The husband is gone for a few days so it's likely the red pair will get finished quicker.

I need to get them done and a coupe other small things and then I can focus on me stuff again. I am going to be picking up the Feb. Lady Sweater again (possibly tonight) though! Part of the supplies the sister sent was a pair of DPN's. That makes for 2 pairs in my possession, only one of which is needed to knit longies. I had to sneak out my 12 inch circ. from the arm on the sweater when I got her stuff and it has been sitting in the corner ever since. I cannot wait to pick it back up. My short sleeved lace sweater will be done in time for fall! :)

A yarny FO- a spinning post :)

I recently organized a fiber swap over on mothering. It was pretty small since there aren't a lot of spinners on there. It turned out pretty well I think. There were a couple glitches but one was the post office mis-directing a package. I think there is only one or two more left to be delivered, one of which is headed to England. Mine came from there. It was/is lovely! :)

This is my first skein from some of my swap fiber. It's an alpaca and tussah silk blend. I enjoyed spinning it since it's new to me but I don't think I'll spin either of these again. The alpaca sheds like crazy and is sticky and the silk reminds me of hair. While it was enjoyable there were plenty of moments of frustration. Not with the fiber but with the inherent qualities of the fiber itself. A big change from the basic merino I have been spinning. The bat came combed so all I had to do was start the spinning (the white is the silk). It's about 2 ounces with 20 wpi...so a lace/baby weight. I'm thrilled as all get out that I managed to do a THIN 2 ply. I can spin a thin single just fine but once I start plying I get a much thicker (and usually not wanted) yarn. Not sure what I'll make with it yet. I had been thinking of something for the mother in law since she was really taken with it while I was spinning but nothing is screaming at me yet.

I have more pictures but for the sake of blog fodder will spread them out. Each thing of fiber I got deserves it's own post. :)