I Dyed.

In the crockpot no less. It was a lot of fun. :^)

I apparently can't keep up with my fluff purchases and also must be very attracted to the shetland wool/angora blend from Avillion Farm, because I found myself with three different batches of it. I thought I had two. Heh.

So, no excuse not to dye a bit. I used the same easter egg colors I dyed the sock yarn with previously and now I'm trying to decide if I should try to sell this beauty. It's taken a lot of self-control (and the delightful alpaca & merino/silk blend of the previous post) to keep me from spinning this caribbean delight.

I Made Some Yarn...

I made this green and yellow yarn over a week ago. My FIL bought the roving for me from the Yarn Circle. It went pretty fast, and it's the thickest I've spun (both in the single ply and the finished product).

Roving the size of my head! Hahaha.






I'm not really sure what to do with it. I've been wanting to make some yarn for my MIL, so I might give it to her if she likes it. I need to spin up some more to make sure there's enough to do a project.


This was some roving that I also got from the Yarn Circle as a freebie. I don't normally spin singles although I like them a lot. I think this will make a lovely fluffy cloud of a project once it's knit.

Roving







And my FIL also got a new bobbin and some of the delightful Trekking XXL for me. My boy has already removed the label of course.




On our way back we stopped in Asheville to get lunch with my husband's aunt & uncle. In the Historic Grove Arcade there is a small yarn store called Home Crafts that is somehow just full of things I want! I found some dense, soft black alpaca roving (vendor "Batman"), and also some amazing merino/silk blend roving (vendor "Mackey's Acres") there. I've already spun them and they are truly lush. It is the softest alpaca I've ever had the pleasure of spinning, and the merino/silk blend is probably the single most amazing thing I've ever spun. I'm plying them with a couple of strands of lambswool/angora that I recycled from a sweater, but I'm not done with that yet. The merino/silk ply looks like a strand of silver running through it.

Roving


Merino Silk Blend


So shiny in the flash:


So many pretties! I need carding equipment so I can do even more. Yeah!

Wedding Special

I took these pictures a while back but I wanted to wait until after the bridal shower, just in case the bride-to-be decided to check out my blog. I made a custom garter for her and then I had two funky buttons left and got the idea to add some beads on elastic to coordinate with her garter. They're shown here on napkins, but I kind of envisioned them being available to perk up whatever needed more bling.

I think she's planning on putting them on her sandals. :^)
(It's going to be a beach wedding).


The garter, all wrapped up for the shower:


Closeup with Flash:


And the whole ensemble:


Garters are fun, but they always seem to take more work than I expect when I start! If only my ideas could spring, fully-formed, directly from my brain. Haha, I wouldn't have room to move on days that I had coffee. Hehehe.

Ready, Set, GO!

I've been making stuff and not posting, and now I'm drowning in undocumented craftiness! Oh, the mountain of pictures to edit. ;^)

Let's start with these legwarmers. I've wanted to make legwarmers for myself for a very long time, and just couldn't completely decide on a style and yarn. Then I spun up this decadent shetland wool/mohair/angora blend from Avillion Farm. I knew this yarn wanted to be something special that I would wear for ages. I got the pattern from Weekend Knitting. Most of the patterns are pretty basic but really allow a fancy yarn to shine.





I love these legwarmers. They are so warm and soft and squishy. And believe it or not I did actually use them already, while we were in the mountains. It was colder than we were expecting and I had a lot of motivation to get the last one finished! I was happy to get some use out of them the last night we were there.

Another Video

I have this cute video of the boy up on myspace and I forgot to post a link to it here.

So here it is, I hope it works.

He knows what a lot of critters say. Stick around until the end for my favorite. ;^)
Say what?

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(F)inally (O)ver!!

{Rant}

If you've had the misfortune of being in my knitting group, then you've already heard me whine (repeatedly) about how much I hate this yarn. I didn't use the specified yarn so I couldn't really tell you if it handles better. I used moda dea spellbound (I think you were right, Niki, but I couldn't remember the name for sure when you asked).

I hated this yarn when I had the superior "skeins" of it, but then by cruel luck the last two skeins were truly deficient. (Two, out of five. I am definitely not impressed at their quality control). This is ribbon yarn made of fluffy threads held together by a few rows of machine sewing... Finicky and easy to poke through with the needles = slow to knit. Annoying, but at least it looked good. The deficient skeins had extremely inconsistent stitching so that the outside edges of the ribbon were feathered throughout. In a few short sections it was actually decent enough to get my hopes up that it might finally return to normal. Ha. Ha. The effect of the feathering completely changed the feel of the knitted fabric and also added a significant halo. In a few discrete places the normal skeins had this effect and it bugged me. You know, before I had to deal with entire skeins of this effect.

Anyways, I made this cute cowlneck and I wondered at the shaping while I was making it. Now I know that I was right to wonder. The back is shaped normally, and narrows at the waist and then widens up to the armpit. In the front it is prepped for the cowl starting from the bottom up, and it doesn't narrow for the waist. It is slowly increased up to the armpit, and then rapidly increased up to the neckline to finish up the cowl.

A shirt needs shaping on both sides to be flattering under normal circumstances (except in certain cases of style & drape), and thick yarn really demands this shaping. I like this shirt. But I could have liked it a lot more. It looks good on me but it does make me appear a fair bit thicker than I actually am.

When I think about how much I hated this yarn every step of the way, and how I actually had to do a fair bit of math to make up the difference in the suggested yarn's row gauge and my "yarn"'s row gauge... yeah, I'm ready for the next project!

WITH REAL YARN.

{/Rant}

On to the pictures. Woo!


Mmmmmmmmmm, don't you wish you had a strawberry cheesecake klondike bar? I stole this from the husband and then forced him to take my pictures. Hehehe, yeah I'm evil.


I'm eating the klondike bar in this pic too, you just can't see it. :^>

I've been working on this since at least November. I feel freeeeeeeeee!

All Tweaked Out

I finally did it. I tweaked with my template. Please accept my apologies if you used to be in my sidebar... I think replacing my links might have to wait until another day.

I must have too many big pictures on here too, because it was taking FOREVER to load everytime I checked to see what my changes had done. I reduced the number of posts displayed but it's still pretty slow.

It's a pretty bold change from what I had before but I think I like it a lot more. I even personalized it with a water garden pic from a few years ago (it's on the header and footer bars).

Dress Alteration Project

On one of my forays to the thrift store I picked up a few things just for me (not sweaters for recycling). This particular dress ended up being way too big for me.

What do you mean, why didn't I try it on at the store? Do you think I was alone? Hahahaha, I always have the toddler with me. He did actually sleep through the sweater acquisition portion of the trip, which was very nice.

So anyway, these first two pics show where I pinned it on the outside (because I'm trying to practice like I'm a seamstress, and they pin it on the outside, baby). I then turned it to the inside and transferred the pinnings to the wrong side using chalk to help me. I had to take in every seam and dart (six seams in all). I had to avoid the embroidery in front which entailed taking the back and sides in more, so the side seams trail toward the back below the waist. Plus I had to rip out where the shell meets the lining at every seam. Otherwise it would have been way too bulky where I took in the seam. I handsewed the lining and shell back together at those spots when I was done.





After all that work, including extending the back darts all the way up to the neck... I washed and dried it. In the machine (on cold water). Ok, I know, but it was pretty dirty and there were a couple of stains and it was in the thrift store... I figured someone had to have washed it at least once! Apparently I was wrong. It shrank slightly, mostly in the length. I then chopped off the bottom (because the bottom embroidery motif was dropping beads and also the lining was longer than the dress after the shrinkage). If you notice that the zipper looks a bit odd it's because of the shrinkage also. Luckily I had given myself a little bit of breathing room before I washed it but now it is a very precise fit, as you can see.













Yeesh what a lot of pictures!

Incidentally, it is nowhere near that pretty and shiny a color in real life, but it is still pretty nice. The fabric is a silk dupioni.

Hairband is handknit from handspun yarn I received in a trade. Ahhhhh, serendipity.

A Link to Share - Edited To Add Pics

Hey, I made me something but I don't want to take time to post pictures right now, so here's a link to my craftster post:

Craftster Corset Tutorial.

I'm on page 21. If you don't frequent craftster you might not be able to see the pics but I plan to post them here later.

B'bye!

---------------------------ETA Pictures----------------------------------------