Black Sheep

Spinning

A middle-of-the-week picture for you. My Kool-aide dyed singles, before I Andean Plied:

2 comments August 30th, 2007

Couple O Things

I promised you a picture of my felted clogs, which I have been wearing constantly (while in the house) for almost two weeks. I LOVE them. I love everything about them. Knitting them was so much fun. It was really cool to see how they would all come together. AND they knit up very, very fast. I had the first one knitted in a day. A mere few hours, really. The felting process was fun, too. I like felting, though. The key with these is to try them on as you are felting them to get the best fit. That means you have to try them on when they are wet, and a little warm (if using hot water to felt). But it’s really worth it because they fit like a dream. They kind of molded to my foot. Like I said, I love them.

The second project that I worked on this week were these footies. As I was rushing out of the house on Tuesday morning I decided that I wanted to knit some footies. I had a knitting date that night so I grabbed some remnants of leftover Lorna’s Laces yarn and decided to try to figure it out later. I was going to try and wing it but I didn’t have to. I found this wonderful little pattern on the Blue Blog. For this project I learned how to do a short row heel and toe and, oh my god, I love it. How much easier can it get? I didn’t have to count anything. I didn’t have to keep track of my rows. And it seemed really quick. Plus, I just love the way it looks. I knitted these little footies up in a couple of days. I will be making more. I will probably make several pairs of these because I love wearing footies.

5 comments August 26th, 2007

Lutea Lace Shell

I finished this a couple of weeks ago and wore it to work on Tuesday. I’m just now getting around to uploading it and posting it! sheesh! anyway here’s the info:

Pattern: Lutea Lace Shoulder Shell from Interweave’s Summer 2007 issue.
Yarn: Blue Sky Alpacas Organic Cotton. My silly-looking Chevron Rib Tank was frogged.
Needles: Size 8. Addis.
Started: July25th 2007
Finished: August 4th 2007.
I made the medium size.

Another quick and easy knit. I like this so much better than the Chevron Rib tank and will wear it more often. I even have a skirt that goes with it! The cotton is soft and comfortable. The only issue I have is that the armholes are a little big. I really need to learn how to adjust patterns so that my finished items will fit me better. But it’s not so bad, really. I was able to wear it without any wardrobe malfunctions.

That’s about all I have to say about that. I’m finished with my felted clogs and am wearing them right now. I love them! I will take pictures and post soon.

Until then, have a great weekend.

4 comments August 19th, 2007

Project Spectrummy

Hi! I’m back from my vacation. I’m updating on the fun times at Blatherskite if you are intersted (or really boared and need something to do ). There were some knitting adventures. And that I will update here. I actually found one yarn store. I didn’t seek out yarn stores in any of the towns we camped near because, well, I was in no condition to go shopping, frankly. But when we were staying on the Long Beach Peninsula we stayed in a really nice motel (where I actually got to take a blessed shower!). And guess what? There was a yarn store right in the little town we stayed in! At first I couldn’t find it and I actually drove and walked down the street it was on twice. I had come to the conclusion that it didn’t exist anymore and that I had looked in an old phone book. But then I had the brains to ask the nice sales lady at an awesome used book store that we stopped at and she gave me directions. It was just down closer to the beach and I didn’t venture down far enough down the road to find it! It is the Tapestry Rose yarn shop. A very fine establishment. Very good customer service and it is located right at the beach. Can’t get much better than that! Oh and it is in the same building as a cafe. Perfect! Of course I bought yarn. I bought a ball of Tofutsies. I mean, come on. I had to buy yarn made partly of crab shells while on the beach. Oh, and i bought the Fiber Trends felted clog pattern. I started on them and am, actually, almost finished knitting them, as you can see from the picture. What a fun knit! And they are in orange, 1/3rd of the next two month’s color triads for Project Spectrum 2.0.

Speaking of that, here is another P.S. project I did yesterday. I bought a pound of BFL roving from Paradise Fibers yesterday, undyed. Then I space-dyed 4 ounces of it using my crockpot with Kool-aide. I used two packets of grape, two packets of orange, and then to make brown I used one packet of orange and one packet of purple. The directions call for four jars of color so I mixed one package of purple and one package of red for the fourth jar, hoping to get a deeper shade of purple. Instead, I got burgundy. Here is what it looks like:

Interesting, eh? It will be fun to spin up. I’m contemplating how to do this. I’m not sure if I want long runs of color, but I don’t think I have much of a choice. Well, I will just go for and see what happens. I am going to play some more with this Kool-aid dying, though. It’s addicting!

3 comments August 14th, 2007

A quick post

I’m going on vacation tomorrow. Yay! We are going on an Oregon State Park extravaganza. First we are camping at Mt. Hood. Then we are going to the coast and staying at various campgrounds on the Oregon Coast, ending up at Long Beach, WA.

I finished my Lutea Lace Shell and it’s blocking. I will take some shots of it on when we get back on Sunday. So look for them a week from today. In the meantime, here it is blocking:

Thank you all so much for your suggestions on how to make Coachella less obscene . They were all really good! I am going to stew on it while I’m gone. I will let you know what I decide.

2 comments August 6th, 2007