YAS strikes again

I stopped by the LYS at lunch today to buy the next skein for my secret one skein pal. I ended up getting her this wonderful soft blue tweedy thin stuff that's wool and silk and a few other things. Yum :)

While there, I wandered into the discount bin in the back and found three skeins I liked a lot, all with no price tags, of course. I took them up and asked for pricing and they were cheap! Two of them were around $4 after discounts and the third one, she looked and said, "Oh heck, I'll just give you that one!"

SCORE! It's a soft sports weight lime green something. I think it's part wool and part acrylic and part something else. But it's all mine :) I love the color and the price certainly can't be beat. I am thinking I might try to make a sock out of it, but as I havne't tried to make socks yet, I don't know if this will happen or not :)

YAY for new yarn!

Better late than never....

I started knitting the cabled purse I want to make for my sister today. I found this soft, fuzzy yarn in pale lavendery blue and medium brown. Those are essentially her wedding colors, so I bought the yarn and intended to make the purse for her shower present, but *ha* we all know that didn't happen.

The wedding is this Saturday. I have 3 1/2 days to make the damn thing, LOL. Something tells me I'm gonna employ the rule that you can give Wedding gifts up to a year after the wedding on this one :P

I only did the first 8 rows at lunch, lol. It looks really nice, though, and it's super soft. I know she is gonna love it!

The yarn is Bernat Soft Boucle in color # 26949, Westport Shades. The pattern I'm using is here -> Cool Cable Baguette

Love Glove

My sister's wedding shower was today. All in all, I think it went off pretty well :) I am pleased and SUPER GLAD it's over. Now, I just have to make it through the wedding next weekend and then I can have my life back. This is the last "thing" looming over me.

Besides throwing the shower, I made her a gift. WARNING: It's TOTALLY cheezy and sappy, but I also think it's a wonderful and amazing concept and hell, when can you get away with being sappy EXCEPT at a Wedding Shower :P

It's called the Love Glove :D Basically, it's a two-person glove. One person puts their hand in one side (through the ribbed cuffs I knit), then the other person puts their hand in and then you can keep yer hands warm and toasty in the fleece heart (which I sewed up) while holding hands :D

My sister and her beau live in Virginia, so it makes sense for those long, romatic walks in the snow :P

I think it's adorable and I'm SUPER proud of how well it came out :D

love glove pride*

shower presents

My sister's bridal shower is in...4 DAYS!!!! Do I have her presents made yet?

NooOoOoOOooOooOOOoOo.

I have one dishcloth made but I need to fix the bind-off. I have another dishcloth made but the cotton yarn broke mid way through, so it's small now and I want to crochet around the edges to make it bigger.

I need to make one more dishcloth and a two-hand glove. :|

When, pray tell, am I going to make this shit?!

I see Target in my future.....

Glittery obligations

I'm part of a craft swap called Betty Crafter. Basically, the jist of it is that we had to make postcards depicting some craft that we do and sent them off to 10 folks with a recipe on the back.

I was planning all kinds of elaborate postcards, with knit flaps and beads and gosh, LOTS of work :) Then, I started getting some from the 10 folks that I'm on their list. They weren't that inspired. Just photocopies and stamps and the such. Maybe the ones I get next will be faaabulous, but after getting the first few, I thought, "Why the heck am I gonna stress myself out and do something so elaborate?!"

And this is what I did instead :P



I printed the recipe on the back, then printed a color picture of my spinning. I cut them into postcard sized things, then painted glitter over the yarn on the picture (the black dots on this scanned picture) and glued a piece of the yarn that I spun in the picture next to it.

Address, a few stamps and voila! Postcard obligation taken care of :)

One Skein Secret pal ROCKS!!!!

Okay, seriously here. I have participated in MANY MANY secret pal-type things. Secret Santas, secret recipe swaps, all sorts of stuff. And I always seem to get a lame secret pal, who either does very little for me or does nothing at all.

Well, all that is changing! I got my pacakge from my One Skein secret pal Friday afternoon and oh my gosh! It was the best, most fun and exciting package I think I've received all year!


She sent me a scrumptious skein of wool, as you can see above...the colors are so very gorgeous :) But she didn't stop there, nooOoOoOOo. She went above and beyond the call of duty and sent me some purse handles (the round things in the picture) and found 4 patterns for purses, 2 on the knifty knitte,r one crochet and one needle knit, printed them out and included them.

I got a whole dang knit a cool purse kit! Rock on, secret pal!

Oh, and the coolest card was enclosed, it's a man knitting from a giant ball of yarn, which is in the place of a globe on a stand :)

Knitting certainly makes the world go round :)

*happy glowy One Skein Secret Pal Recipient*

I hope my secret pal liked HER package half as much as I loved mine!

Show and Tell

I couldn't sleep last night. I don't know why, I had a pretty good day. I got my review at work and I got a 3 out of a 4 on the written review, a ton of gushing compliments about my work and my worth to the company AND more than double what my percentage raise should have been for a 3. I got a 10% raise, the biggest percent they were offering as a way to show me how much they have appreciated me and all I do. So, yay for me on the work front, lol.

But I still couldn't sleep. I was worrying and fretting about all the stuff I have coming up that I need to get done in the next few days. So, I got my ass up and did a photo shoot of a lot of projects I've been working on. Maybe y'all don't care, but I feel like a little show and tell :P

This is my finished (mostly) shrug I've been working on. It's a pain in the arse having long arms like I do, cause you're knitting forever it seems like :) I just got it off the loom last night and held it together with binder clips (cause I'm sexy that way) to try it on and take pictures. It will be better once I have the monkey claw knots to hold the arms together and I block it and weave in the ends...but I am just thrilled with it, so I had to share :D

This is my new Wonder Loom with the VERY beginning of a dishcloth for my sister on it. She's getting married this month and for her shower gift, I'm making her a lover's glove (I know, that sounds pervy, but it's really one fleece glove in a heart shape with two cuffs so you can wear a glove while holding hands with yer lover inside the glove. It's corny, I know, but when better to give corny gifts than at a shower?!) and I wanted to knit her some dishcloths with hearts, wedding cakes and rings on them to go with it. The shower is in two weeks...we'll see how many I get done, lol. This one is just gonna be a pattern, not have a picture on it. The colors are very "her," so I think she'll like it.

This is a travel spindle I made based loosely on this commercial one.Rather than spend $30-$40 bucks on one, I got out my jigsaw and cut the shape out of a scrap piece of oak I had after I made a loom recently, drilled a hole in the middle and stole one of my son's green tinker toys for the handle and voila! A fully-functioning spindle that cost me all of 50 cents :P It works well too, as you can see by the sample yarn I spun up on it once it was made :) It uses a park and draft method, so I can get singles quite thin and even...yay!

This is my possum fiber!!! Isn't it gorgeous?! It's part possum and part wool. I'm gonna spin it thin and then ply it with some dark brown wool and make my sweetie slippers out of it :) I'm a happy camper :)

These are some samples of what I was doing on Memorial day while the BBQ cooked dinner :) I was picking burrs and bits out of my wooly white fleece, carding it and making these rolags to spin it into fabulous yarn :) I only made about 10 rolags, because 1) it's a PAIN IN THE ASS to pick all the gunk out and 2) I wanted to see how I liked spinning from rolags before I made it all up into them. I haven't spun any yet, but it's super soft and wonderful. My son felt it on the cards and has decided that he wants me to make a layer under his sheets of the stuff so it will heep him warm and cozy and soft when he's sleeping :) Cute kid :P

This is the yarn I bought for my One Skein secret pal :D I am IN LOVE with this yarn and if were wealthy, I would buy a big pile of it and sleep in it every night :) It's the softest, most squishiest yarn in existance, 100% baby alpaca, and it is just...beyond words in amazing softness :) Of course, I have yet to buy any for myself, but I keep eyeing this rusty orange/red version and I may have to break down and splurge and buy me some one of these days....imagine a scarf or hat in this stuff.... *swoons with the luxury of it all* I hope my secret pal likes it, I'm mailing it off to her today! You can't see the color very well, but it's a dark teal/dark blue mixed color yarn. She likes greens and blues and is part goth chick and part hippy, so I think it fits her well.

Let me start by stating that I DID NOT SPIN THIS YARN! It's store-bounght, 50% llama and 50% wool. But, I hand-dyed it with indigo dye :D I'm pretty happy with how the color came out, and the yarn itself is very soft and plush. Perfect for something for my son, I just don't know what yet. Maybe slippers? Or, it might become part of a Birthday present for my mother, she loves the color...we'll have to see. Right now, it's just sitting in my Stash, waiting for me to get inspired :)

Not really crafty, but I'm just happy with this Memorial Day purchase :P I had been eyeing these placemats at Bed Bath and Beyond for oh, about a month now...and I couldn't bring myself to buy them for $4.99 each. Well, memorial day, I just happened to stop by BB&B and these were on a clearance rack for 99 cents each, plus 50% off!!!!!! Yes, I got 4 of them for $2 :D I'm a happy bargain shopper and I have my groovy orange and rusty red placemats now :)

That's all folks :D Cross your fingers for me that I sleep tonight, or you might be getting pictures of my different types of fiber tomorrow, lol!