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...

Handspun and WIPs

Today I've got some pictures of handspun yarn! Always exciting.

First, a couple small skeins of handdyed laceweight. The colours you can get with food colouring are really fantastic, I'm so pleased with how these came out. This was the first time I've dyed the roving and then spun it.

There isn't enough yarn to do much with, so I'm going to try making knitted jewellery with these. I really love the lace necklaces people make, and I've been meaning to try it myself for a while now.

As you may or may not know, I'm fond of taking yarn apart and respinning it. I had a bit of bulky yarn that was blue, green and two shades of purple. I separated it into colours, and respun it into two singles, a blue-green one and a purple-purple one, then plied those.

I like the yarn I spun much better than the original.

I tried to make a tam, but I ran out of yarn too quickly.

I really don't want to go buy more yarn. I think my options are to finish it with a contrasting colour (something plain though, maybe black? It's already pretty colourful.) or take it apart and make a toque instead. I'm leaning towards the second option, but I really don't know. Maybe it'll go into the unfinished projects bin and I'll forget about it for a couple months.

I mentioned a couple posts ago that I was going to try making socks.

Well, I'm trying. There are several things that have come up, and there's no way my socks are going to match now. First problem:

Wtf. There is no way these are the same dyelot. I feel so betrayed! The dyelot on the label was the same!

Second problem:

How did this happen? Dramatic tension change? Was I just really nervous for the first one? I just don't know. Maybe I can block them to the same size? (This seems unlikely but I'll try anyway.)

Sigh. I guess it will be sort of ok. Listening to the Robot Pirates helps a bit.

Good news though! I finished embroidering needle sizes onto my circular needle case! It's on my wall above my bed now, terribly satisfying.

For someone who is obsessed with knitting and yarn as much as I am, I appear to have a severe lack of scarves. This is madness!

I started a lace scarf last night. I've had this yarn forever, it's really lovely, I am so excited to be using it at last.

Dyed Yarn and Beads!

So far I've dyed two of the skeins I got a few days ago! Both are dip-dyed with food colouring, and steam-set in the microwave. I'm really happy with how they turned out!


This one reminds me of this gum.



The first one I re-skeined after dying it on a slightly smaller niddy-noddy, which is why the different colours are all mixed up together; the second one I just twisted into a hank. Which do you think looks better? I'm not sure which I prefer.


I got inspired by this person's photos to play with polymer clay again! I made some beads and mushroom pendants. I forgot they were in the oven, so they got a liiiiiittle overcooked. Heh, oh well.



I threaded them into sets and attached them to little cards because I'm going to take them to Rare Funk. I've got an assignment account there, but I haven't really used it, only taken some hats there aaaages ago. I have some armwarmers I knitted that I might take there - I made up the pattern so it's legal for me to sell them. Ftw!

I'm kind of annoyed at Canada Post, I wasn't home when they delivered a package, so I have to pick it up, which is fine, but it is not at the post office that is LITERALLY around the corner from me, or at the one which is a 5 minute walk away, or the one that's a 10 minute walk away. It's actually not that far away, but there are THREE post offices that are closer than the one I have to go to! Bah.

Also, for some reason I got 407 views on my flickr two days ago - waaay more than usual. No idea what's up with that.

ALL THE YARN

I am proud to announce I can now go into Len's Mill without attempting to buy ALL THE YARN. I think it's because I'm now a total yarn snob, and want to save my yarn money for buying gorgeous fancy yarn.

Anyway, I got some white 100% wool yarn because I want to practice dying yarn! I'm only using food colouring for now, since I can get it locally, it makes bright colours, and I can still use the dishes I dye in afterwards. I've only dyed yarn I've spun so far, but spinning takes quite a while, and I'd like to be able to practise on yarn I didn't put tons of effort into.

Here's the skein of yarn I spun + dyed most recently:



100% "organic fibre" from Louet (I'm not sure what "organic fibre" means). Hand spun with a drop spindle. Single ply. Hand dyed with food colouring. Approx 200m, 145g, DK weight. There's a bit of slub in this, but not as much as previous yarn I've spun!