Shall We Knit is here!!

It's very very exciting! Shall We Knit?, a yarn store that lived in New Hamburg, has moved to Waterloo! Not only that, but they moved to a location that takes me all of five minutes to walk to. I am ridiculously excited....they have a whole ROOM just for sock yarn! If you are in Waterloo and spend any time knitting at all, I really really recommend you check them out, they have some marvelously delicious things. (Including a wonderful selection of Koigu.)

And because blog posts are no fun without pictures, here's what I got when I visited (adhering to my only-buy-one-thing decision):

It's Koigu (of course), my plan is to make fingerless gloves that I'll actually wear.

In other news, I spun this yarn:

It is very lumpy and uneven, but that is was I was going for (I didn't prep the fibre at all). I am calling it "acidity" for no particular reason. There's only about 94m here, but I have a bunch of this fibre, so I'll probably spin most of it up like this, and make another hood:

In exciting news, I may be doing a yarn bombing workshop at love.MADE, pending figuring some stuff out. More details will follow as they become available! If it works out I may try to get more involved with them, because they are literally just down the street from my house.

Finally, I've started to give knitting and crochet lessons! $15/hr for individual lessons or $8/hr/person for group lessons. Materials available for a fee or you can bring them yourself. Flexible times and locations. Comment if you're interested, but I don't have a car, so Waterloo-Kitchener area is really the only area I can work with.

Flashin' My Stash

So, as you may know if you're a local yarnie, Herrschners (a local yarn and scrapbooking store) was having a closing sale last week. I got some very nice yarn:

for a rather decent price. The red skeins on top are cashmere. But then when I got home, I couldn't fit them onto my yarn shelves, so obviously the only solution was to reorganize ALLLLLLLL my yarn. So I put in on my bed:

...which was a lovely experience. Then I organized everything by fiber type and quality:

Cheaper wool:

A very small part of my crappy acrylic:

Some nicer acrylic:

Handspun, handdyed and dying yarn:

Non-wool fibers:

My fancy nice wool:

It's nice to have yarn yarn yarn yarn. I went wading:

Pattern and yarn reviews

I have a new favourite pattern! Skoodlet (ravelry link), by Leethal, who makes various wonderful things. It's awesome, a hood/scarflet thing, it is absolutely delicious. I made a giant one (to accommodate my dreads and to make me look more mysterious) out of Nashua Handknits Granite, which is quite a lovely yarn. (ravelry link.)

The pattern is written to work with any yarn you want; you measure your gauge and put it into the formula. It's super easy to figure out, just simple multiplication and putting in numbers. I do recommend printing it out to write the numbers in - it's too confusing otherwise! Luckily, leethal has written the pattern so that only 2 pages actually need to be printed out. Suggestions for possible modifications are given in the pattern, so it was super easy to make it big enough for my overlarge hair. All the techniques she uses (including a figure-eight cast on I hadn't used before) are clearly explained at the start of the pattern. There were maybe a couple lines I had to read through a couple times, but for the most part everything was very clear. And of course, the skoodlet is absolutely ADORABLE, I wore it all day today and never wanted to take it off. EVER. It's sitting by my bed where I can reach it at a moment's notice.

5 stars for an awesome pattern!

The top and bottom buttons on it are ones I've drawn on - <3 drawing on buttons.

The yarn I used was Nashua Handknits Granite in "Deep Mix." I didn't have super high expectations of this yarn: the colours seemed nice, and I love slub yarn, but 70% wool, 30% acrylic doesn't tend to inspire blind confidence, simply because there's so much variation in the quality of both fibres. I was pleasantly surprised though, it's lovely and soft! All the thick sections are coloured, the thinner sections grey, so it has a really awesome texture when knitted. This is one of the few yarns I actually like better when it's knitted, I usually prefer the look of skeined yarn. It has a nice drape without being too heavy. While it doesn't reach the extremes of fabulousness some other yarns do, it's a very nice yarn indeed and I want more of it!

4.5 stars for great yarn!

A yarn I am less happy with is Twilleys of Stamford Freedom Spirit. I've used it before and it didn't seem so bad, but I guess I've acquired taste now. It's rather scratchy, and splits very easily. I bought it because I really like the colours as they appear on the ball, but they're muddy an disappointing when knitted up. I'd planned on using sections of reverse stockinette, but it ended up looking like such a mess that I had to use the other side. It might just be this colourway that's like this, I've used a different one before and it didn't have these problems...but I was crocheting....maybe I should just crochet with this yarn? But I'm halfway done a knitted hat! Anyway, I'm super disappointed with this.

2 stars for crappy yarn. Boo.

My other WIP is a purple lace dress, using Mari Lynn Patrick's Featherlight Lingerie Dress pattern from Lace Style.

The pattern is fine so far, even though it has some seaming, and picking up 450 stitches. I nearly went insane, and I'm only done the skirt part. I feel like this could have been designed to incorporate less seaming and picking up stitches, and if I'd thought about it I would probably have tried to do that myself. Too late now though. This project is on hold for a little, until I've gotten over picking up all those stitches.

3 stars for a decent pattern that could have been designed better.

The yarn I'm using is Maseru by Fleece Artist. I bought it for the gorgeous colour, bright vibrant purple! I got one skein of straight purple, and one matching varicolour skein, and I'm alternating every few rows (which is where that half-striped pattern is coming from). This yarn is soft but scratchy, which is not really surprising at 60% mohair, and it's very light and floaty - great for a dress! It's never going to be my favourite, I wouldn't be able to wear it against my skin, but the colours, floaty-ness, and price ($10 per 545 yard skein) make it a great choice for mohair projects.

4.5 stars for bright purple yarn!

Handspun and FOs

Some new handspun:

Purple dragon. I spun this a while ago, but never took a picture of the finished skein. This was my first time spinning from a batt, I really enjoyed it!


Foreign skies. This is the thinnest yarn I've ever spun! It's 2-ply and laceweight. This is the first time I've spun using long draw.



Mermaid's den. Respun from Lion Brand Homespun. Two skeins of singles and one 2-ply with occasional beads. There doesn't seem to be a good way to spin beads without putting them on a separate thread and plying that with a single - I tried threading the beads onto one of the singles, then pushing the beads along, which sort of worked, but the single kept breaking and it was very frustrating.

Some recent(ish) FOs:

Lace armwarmers. I made these quite a while ago, but never took pictures. This is another one I'm planning on writing out a pattern for, I really like how these turned out. If the pattern gets written out I'll probably add a thumb.


Silk and alpaca scarf. Worked sideways; the silk is sari ends I spun. I like this! I need to rinse it, but I'm worried about the dye on the silk running, it's happened before.


Child's hat. Cables!

Gosh

Several exciting things I have done recently:

I PASSED PHYSICS! I was so very worried I wouldn't, and the fact that marks took forever to be posted wasn't helping with my mindset. I did not do spectacularly, but considering the course I am pleased with my mark.

I WROTE A PATTERN! It's a pattern for my dreadlock hat, and you can find it HERE. (Ravelry link only for now, I may post this on my website at some point, if I ever get around to making it a proper website.) The pattern is only $1, I fully endorse it! Just look at how lovely the two I made are:

I finished all my x-mas presents on time! I will post pictures once I have them, I need to get my family to take pictures of themselves in my lovely creations. I am rather pleased with myself for finishing everything before I got home, even if I was just knitting for immediate family.

I remade a table to be a delicious monster named Soysauce! His birthday was January 1, 2011, he is a bundle of joy brought into my life by a glue gun. His teeth are made from an old wedding dress!

I found a bunch of semi-decent yarn at the thrift store! Including some delicious neon
laceweight (ie, string). I'm gonna make lovely lace arm warmers that will glow under blacklights!

I got paid (wooo!) by Rare Funk; I hadn't ever picked up a cheque from them, so it was quite a satisfying amount.

I had an unfortunate incident with a can of custard. Delicious but painful.

I dyed my hair...this one may sound less exciting, but dying dreadlocks is a difficult, dangerous, and deadly business.

I am so very much not ready for school to start. It is complicated and difficult even when I like the courses. It's only been two days of classes, and I've already slept for 2.5 hours on campus.

Yarn bracelets

Knitted jewelery has intrigued me for some time, but I haven't really known where to start. It's not that it seems difficult, I just lack inspiration. Then the other day I was thinking about how I usually like skeined yarn better than when it's knitted or crocheted, so I made these bracelets. They're very simple, but I really like how they turned out.

Oh my GAWD

It's happened. I went to Herrschners to pick up some Mirasol Hacho to finish my scarf. I had PROMISED myself that I was ONLY going to buy that yarn, and NOTHING ELSE. I was quite determined, I swear.

But the bus only came every half hour, so I had to wander around the store for a little while...

It's not ...a LOT of yarn, right?

I swear I don't know what happened. I was just wandering around, and then when I went to the cash there was all this yarn in the basket! I blame the sale room in the back. And the sale on the yarn in the non-sale room. Oh dear...

This is neat though:

It's like a cheap acrylic version of Noro! The colour aren't as nice, and it is acrylic, but Kureyon is always rather rough feeling anyway? It's nice to have cheaper alternatives, this was only $5/skein.

Also, new glow-in-the-dark needles!

I think my stash has grown significantly in the last month. In addition to spending FAR too much money on yarn today and yesterday, this magical box arrived in the mail:

Wait till you see what's inside:

I swear I got tingles when I opened it. 2lbs of fibre I got from a lovely person who was destashing on ravelry. Gosh, there are soooo many wonderful inside it! Happyhappyhappyhappy.

Happy.

Happy!

:D

I am using things though! I made a hat with some of the yarn from Michaels last night, it knitted up super fast because it's sooo chunky. I like it! It's a cloche (and looks a little large here because Cassie has a tiny cute head!).

Also, some handspun:

I spun and dyed it yellow in the summer, but I was unsatisfied, so I resist dyed it the other night, with elastics. I like how it looks spotty, so I call it "Spotted Frog." I plied it with itself...plying from either ends of a centre-pull ball works, believe it or not. (I was sceptical, I thought it would turn into a tangled mess, but no!)

So yes, a good day. Despite my COMPLETE AND UTTER unfaithfulness to my purported yarn diet. Oh well, I sort of knew it was lies.

But now I'm on a yarn diet FOR REALS THIS TIME, I swear.

Unless, you know...

Something comes up...

Awesome Haul

Oh man. So Cassie and I went to Michaels to spend all our money at the yarn sale.

You will be glad to know that we were successful.

My excuse was that I got most of it to make hats to sell. (I did get some Lion Brand Homespun in a lovely teal colour that I'd been eyeing for a while...it's awful to knit with, but the fibre is nice! I'm prolly going to end up taking it apart ftw.)

On the way home we stopped off at the dumpster, which was suuuuuuuper full of lovely things. Check this out:

Sooooooooo much stuff! We had to ...borrow.... a shopping cart to get it all home. I'm super excited about all those plastic shelves, finally a proper way to organise my fibre! Plus lots of random shinies! This is my absolute favourite:

GOD YES.

It's squishy and has a multicoloured flashing LED inside it! I almost bought one of these a couple months ago, so I was soooooo excited to find it!!! Dumpster diving ftw.

Craft Fair?

It's that time of year again - craft fairs. I haven't really been looking into them much this year, I don't have a whole lots of stuff to sell apart from what I've already taken to Rare Funk, but a friend told me about one the university is having, which is free!



We've applied to be in it, so (since yesterday) I've been making things to sell. Right now I've made bookmarks:

and mini bags:

The bags are pretty basic, so I've written the pattern down and will probably post it later. They're giving me a reason to use up some of my ribbon, which is nice because I have somehow accumulated so much of it and never have any reason to use it.

My scarf is finally making some progress! I frogged the whole thing twice since my last post, but I finally figured out what I wanted, so now I have two skeins worth knitted! I really like how it's turning out:

It's got a really nice drape and I reeeally like running my hand through it. But (as I predicted) I've run out of yarn. BAH. So I'm breaking my yarn diet (which I am NOT very good at sticking to) on friday to go get some more. I hope they still have the same dyelot, but it will serve me right if they don't.

As if that wasn't enough, Michael's is having a 50% off sale on yarn this week! ARG!! I will probably break my yarn diet even more for this....but....so cheap!! Michael's yarn is all about the quality I like to use for hats I sell, because it's cheap enough that I can charge reasonable amounts for hats (and not break my heart every time I take something to the store).

Woodstock Fleece Festival Part 2

What a horrible week. I was going to rant about the fleece festival (rest assured, I still will), but I ended up with four assignments and a midterm due this week, severely cutting back on my internet time. I've hardly had ANY time to craft this week, it's super upsetting!

But on to better things.

That is what I bought at the fleece festival! I might have got a liiiittle overexcited, but it was my first fibre festival and I just couldn't contain myself. Plus, it was (almost) all really well priced! I haven't quite worked out what I spent yet, I've been avoiding thinking about it. I might have spent all my grocery money for November. Well, if I run out of food I'll just go to everything on campus with free food, that's the best way to deal with that problem, right?

Now I'm not going to go on (and on, and on) about everything I bought, but I have to share a few special things.

I WON this! I had my eye on it when I entered the raffle, and it was still there when I won! So so so so exciting. The price tag said $50, crazy eh?


This is really cool, it's two skeins of different fibre dyed to match by Fleece Artist. I don't have any fixed plans for this yet, but it was too nice to pass up! One skein is merino, the other is "angel hair" - 70% kid, 30% nylon.


These are also fleece artist, lovely laceweight purple! 66% Mohair, 24% Wool, 10% Nylon. I got one dyed straight purple, and one that was varicoloured with sections of the same purple, I'm planning on using them for a lace shawl, because I am sort of in the mood for a lace shawl.


4oz of border leicester locks. They have fantastic texture and colour variation!


This bag is a pound and was $10. For dyed wool! Oh man! They had all these bags with different colours and you got to pick your own, it was super exciting. I also got some bamboo-merino blend from here.


I got a new spindle! It has a really wide whorl, and it's pretty heavy. I really like the grain of the wood that's visible! I actually sanded it down a little because the varnish was a little bumpy in places, but for $22 I'm definitely not complaining!
The fibre is merino-viscose, and I am entirely in love with it. It drafts beautifully, is wonderfully soft, and I love how it's dyed! I'm going to spin it all into a lace/fingering weight single, and make something lacy with it.


This was my particularly indulgent purchase. I'd told myself NOT to buy any yarn that was more than $20/skein, but this was so EXACTLY my favourite colours, and it felt soooo nice, and the stall took credit cards....
I have no regrets. The fact I only bought one is a credit to my self-control.

Even apart from all the gorgeous fibre, the fleece festival was thoroughly enjoyable. After I'd spent all my money I wandered around with my new drop spindle and chatted to people. So many people who love fibre in one place! Wondrous. I'm going to start saving for next year RIGHT NOW. Well, maybe after I've saved enough for this one yarn I really want...