i’m not dead, gravely injured, or aboard the mother ship

does the mothership even have wi-fi?

anyways, this is just to let you know that i am still here.  with all the drama and business or school starting back up i haven’t had time to do a proper post, but here is a hilarious sarah palin video to tide you over.  i know all of the drama and press coverage about her is just giving the republican’s what they wanted, but i can’t help it.  its the newest, most outrageous, most tangled soap opera, and best of all- its real!

i am in fact back, and there has been much knitting and other going’s on in the past three weeks.  first the knitting. ( it turns out that i really suck at taking mirror pictures, so all of the photos were taken using the  photobooth application on my macbook.  even though it doesn’t look like it all of the colors, on my monitor at least, are really true to what they actually are.)

i think that being on a roadtrip creates some kind of time warp because looks what i finished in just 2 days of driving-

pattern:

my own

yarn:

handspun!  i spun this out of a very lightly processed merino roving. working with it made my hands feel so nice because of the lanolin

needles:

denise circulars in a U.S 6

notes:

they don’t look like they took a lot of time, but i worked it out and if you add up all of the ripping that i did i actually knitted the equivilent of two and a half pairs.  all of the ripping was due to the fact that i only had around 75 yards of yarn to work with.  luckily these used just the right amount of yarn, and i finished with  inches to spair

pattern:

a re-mix of flintknit’s re-mix of the bainbridge scarf

yarn:

one ball of debbie bliss cashmerino aran

needles:

denise circulars U.S. 5

notes:

as far as the mish-mashed pattern goes, thats what happens when, while in a car in middle-of-nowhere-ville florida, you decide that you want to knit a bainbridge scarf.  it helps if you have only read the instructions for said scarf once and still don’t really get how it fits together.  i pretty much remembered that you cast on 125 stitches (its actually 165) make a buttonhole somewhere and then make a tab, so thats what i did.  the upside of my bad memory is that i ended up using only 1 ball of the cashmerino.

i also completed the rest of my winter ensemble

pattern:

broadstreet mittens

yarn:

some no name wool sportweight, to me it looks like it was handspun. it is a bit scratchy, but for the amazing green color i forgive it

needles:

phildar circulars U.S. 2

notes:

this is without a doubt the worst pattern i have come across.  first off there is  pretty big math error when you increase for the palm ( it should be knit four increase one, not knit 3), and then once you are past that you find out that the pattern was written for someone with huge palms but skinny stick fingers.  i had to make a ton of modifications, but i love the end result so i’m putting these in the win column

pattern:

my own.  a basic hat with garter ridges and a star decrease on top

yarn:

malabrigo worsted merino

needles:

denise circulars U.S. 8

notes:

i LOVE this hat!  first i’m really happy with the pattern.  i wanted something easy that still had some visual interest, and this is perfect ( i may write up a pattern in the future).  secondly, the yarn is amazing!  if i only ever knit with this and peace fleece ever again i would be one happy girl.  for me malabrigo’s big selling factor isn’t the softness.  it is increddibly soft, but no more than other well manufactured merino’s i’ve felt.  what does it for me is the squishyness.  the texture is so spongy!

thats the end of my knitting news but i finally sat down at the machine again so there is also sewing news

out of all the purses i have made this one is definitely my favorite.  the fabric for the outside is one leg of some jeans that i got at the thrift store, and the lining (which you can see poking out in picture number 2) is a blouse that i got at a swap meet.

the body of the bag is a rhombus whith rounded bottom corners and for the lining i kept the pocket that the blouse had and added another pocket and a band of elastic for hanging pens of off.

i think that the handles are the coolest part.  we had gotten this weird grommet gun thing a while back (it looks a lot like a pair of pliers) so, before i had sewn in the lining, i used that to shoot in two grommets on each side.  then, (because i was braiding with four strips of cloth) i threaded two strips through each one and sewed the ends together.  after that i braided them and repeated the threading and sewing process on the other side

and thats it for now!  but there is plane knitting on the horizon and i’m thinking that when i come back from l.a. i’ll have a travel update post

yet another non post

sorry about not posting this week, even though i’ve been really busy, its mostly been stuff thats isn’t interesting enough to post about. i’m sorry to say that this isn’t the big update post you’ve been waiting for. it’s just a note to say that i’m off for another week. i do promise though that there will be a (real) new post in no later than a week and a half

Bonjour!

sorry for the long silence.  i’m in minnesota being eaten alive by mosquitoes and learning to parler francais….

a whale of a post!

i’ve been a bad blogger and haven’t updated in a while. so, to make up for it here is (insert your choice of theme music here) super-post

first, new knits- my love affair with peace fleece finally culminated with me buying some and casting on for the central park hoodie. of course everyone else finished it last year, but the sheep in me wants to follow season’s be damned. my goal is to finish it before i leave for camp on the 29th, it looks like its going to happen! this knits up FAST. even though i realized just before i started the armholes that i was four stitches short and had to rip out 14 inches of knitting (there were tears, as well musings on why the gods were displeased with me) i’m almost done with the hood and i re-started on memorial weekend. the pattern itself is really good. there is only one bit of errata, which i didn’t fix, and it still came out fine. i knit the body all in one piece, and didn’t have any problems altering it. my issue lies in the sizing, specifically the arm sizing. the arms are tiny! i have pretty sticklike arms but i still ended up having to add 8 stitches to the initial cast on and then increase every 20 rows. And even with that alteration thee sleeves are a bit more snug than i would like. but arms aside i’m really happy with it. the yarn is super warm and cozy and the color is to die for, a really vibrant grassy green with flecks of blue and red.

i had a mini photoshoot last week where i took the above picture as well as these

new hobbies- i told you guys before that i had learned how to spin, and my interest how now grown into obsession. to further enable my obsession, i bought a spinning wheel!!!! its a baynes. i unfortuantely wasn’t able to try any wheels before i purchased one so i based my decision on:

• cost (preferably very very cheap)
• look (i wanted a wheel that was pretty, why would i want to spend hours in front of something ugly?)
• easy to use and easy to learn on (i’m going to be teaching my self so ease of use is essentia)

the baynes is all of those things. i got the clear finished double treadle which was within my price limit. the wheel looks classic but still very polished and modern. and, from the people i’ve talked to it is really easy to operate and learn on. plus, the customer service from susan’s spinning bunny was great! she and her husband walked me through the process and answered all of my questions. now all i have to do is wait stalk the mailperson and hope that customs doesn’t suspect that there is dynamite hidden in the bobbins.

new knitters- i’m working as a counselor at a pre-school summer camp (the same one i attended. i like to wear my shirt that i made there when i was three) and i mentioned that i like to knit. it turns out that another counselor and one of the grown-ups knit to! we ended up excitedly discussing sock and maryland sheep and wool as the muggle counselor looked on in amazement. this is the first time that i’ve really discovered knitters in the wild and i’m really excited

yes we can

and we did!

Obama for President 2008!

10 ways the world has changed since you were in school

well, this one presents some problems as i still am in school, so lets pretend that i ended my education in th fifth grade

1. we didn’t have heely’s back then, we had to sprain our ankles more creative
2. recess was a right, equal to that of free speech, not the hot-button issue it is today.
3. and during our taken-for-granted recess we were allowed to play dodgeball. (honestly, i don’t see what the fuss is about, i think people get hurt more often playing soccer and football in p.e.)
4. cupcakes for birthdays were encouraged, even the teacher needs a little sugar jolt to keep going. (as a late june birthday i’m still bitter about having to bring in end of school Popsicles instead)
5. the standardized tests have come. ( at middles schools they even come with bonus pep rallies)
6. bribery is now an accepted form of motivation ( as seen in the mcdonalds report card snafu. not only is it unethical its packed chock full of trans fats)
7. homeschoolers are seen as (relatively) more normal than they were when i first homeschooled in kindergarten
8. facebook is the new neopets
9. kids weren’t reading, they were watching tv instead, so the tv got brought to the library. the latest trend in children’s publishing is tv show spin off books. of course to really get the story you need to watch the show
10. the world may be 70% water, but its working towards being totally green. almost every school now has an environmental club, and middle schoolers will energetically explain he effects of greenhouse gases to you.

10 on tuesday

i’ve decided to start doing 10 on tuesday.  i love reading about random bits from other people’s lives, so here are some from mine

10 favorite time-wasters

1. checking my googlereader. because in the 5 seconds since i last checked someone could have posted

2.knitting

3.spinning.  this and knitting often go together, because knitting prompts a trip to the craft room and in the craftroom there is fiber along with the stuff required to make it into yarn, in what is obviously the fate’s way of telling me that i should spin

4. re-discovering websites.  remember that cool website for a year ago, lets go find it again

5. finding things.  the hunt to find something is one of the best time-wasters in that trying to find somehting doesn’t really seem like wasting time, because at the end you hopefully have something that you needed.  but it does lead you to other forgotten things which must be picked up, re-examined, and played with

6.ravelry. there are thousands of patterns in ravelry, and eventually i will have looked at all of them

7. reading blogs.  this is different from checking the googlereader because i’m not just talking about 1 post.  i’m talking about reading the blog, preferable starting at the first post and working my way forward.  whenever i add a new blog to my list i like to do this.  it lets me get to know the person, in a virtual way, and its like having all the fun things about blog-reading compressed into one big lump

8.  making schedules.  planning the work that will be done after the procrasinaiton makes the procrastination feel more productive, and i like having to do lists even though i have never looked at a to do list after i was done writing it.  just having it makes me happy

9. reading. the newspaper alone has the front page, style, metro, health, business, and comics. and then there are the 2 or 3 works in progress of the literary type

10. playing pointless games on the internet. the ones that require you to sink into a part meditative and part vegetable state are best

chihuahuas, the power behind the throne

i recently saw a preview of a movie about the chihuahuas of beverly hills, it involved rapping lapdogs and an insinuation that the only reason the aztecs were so great was because the chihuahuas were close behind

it was :

A- a spoof, of the sort found on Saturday night live and some of the wittier youtube channels

B- in theaters because the preview is real and come September we will be able to see chihuahuas dancing on the big screen

C- i made up the whole thing

it makes me very happy to report that the answer is in fact B.

maryland sheep and wool!

first- the yarn

a skein of tess designer yarns superwash merino. the purple is much deeper in real life, almost black. it’s so soft, and smells really good (i think they scent the dye). once i get around to winding all skein-tieless 550 yards of this i’m hoping for it to become a shrug of some kind

here is my first skein of malabrigo. while soft, i don’t think its quite as ridiculously soft as people made it out to be, but it will make a nice scarf. the color is actually much more neon, and will clash perfectly with the red hat and kelly green gloves i’m planning on

this was my first buy of the day. it’s very shiny almost metallic, and i’m spinning it up into fingering to someday make a shawl.

this was my remorse buy. it is pretty, and drafts like a dream. but i don’t really like pink. i suppose other people like pink, and if it just doesn’t work i’m sure it will work for someone else.

so, not only was there yarn there were sheep, and llama, and bunnies, and goats. there were so-adorable-that-if-we-didn’t-live-in-suburbia-i-would-have-taken-them-home-goats

the goats from the front

the goats from the top

the goats with a random child

it was an awesome day, i’m already planning next years plan of attack. it involves lots of fiber (especially the mystery bumps of fiber i saw, but didn’t buy and now wish i had), and lots of sock yarn ( i was good this year and didn’t get any, but i dont think my resolve will last)