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10:18 AM Posted In Gifts , Knit , Swap Edit This 1 Comment »

I do so enjoy a good swap. I started doing swaps through Reducio Swap. I had so much fun that I told my best friend all about it and we decided to do one ourselves. Who doesn’t love some thought out gifts, even if they are small?

We decided the theme would be inner goddess. So our packages were designed around honoring, celebrating, and bringing out our inner goddesses.

In my package that I gave to her I included a card, with hand punched paper stars, some glittery pens because I know her inner goddess is glittery, and some knitted items. I also included a few knitted items, and a small purple notebook. I do know how she loves notebooks! I hope she will use it to write about all her goddessy qualities. This is the tea wallet I included that I knit. It’s stuffed with delicious tea! And this is the Goddess table cloth I included that I knit for her. I hope when she is ready to start practicing again, that this will be an asset to her. In the mean time, it would look awesome as a wall decoration I think. If I ever get an altar together, something I’ve meant to do for years, I hope to knit one of these for myself for my altar.

The package from her was delightful! She included yarn, goddess hair in my favorite colors, hand drawn goddess art, face lotion, a mystic river rock, from my 1.5yr old nephew, a beautiful card and instructions on how to love and care for my inner goddess and the Knitting Goddess book. Can you believe it? I can’t believe she found such a book. She is clearly awesome, and clearly divine!

I love it so much! She must have also because we immediately began talking about the next one. We have chosen the theme. It’s going to be “My favorite things” where we try and include each others favorite things in the package and share a couple of our own favorite things as well. I’m excited. We have until the end of August for this one, and I am going to certainly need the time for something I have in mind. Handspun and Rainbows

11:28 AM Posted In Handspun , Knit , socks , Spindle Edit This 0 Comments »
I have some new things to show! First off is some handspun yarn.
This was spun on my drop spindle from some Corriedale light grey roving. I am still working on consistency. So there are lots and lots of thin and thick sections in the roving. But I am getting better at the drafting and spinning process going nice and smoothly. I rarely need to park and draft anymore. I was told to wind the single into a center pull ball so that I would be able to ply it on itself. I did that. The process was a disaster. I eventually had to have hubby hold the ball and carefully feed each end of it to me while I plied. So that took a long time. But this is the result! (the one on the top) I'm pretty happy with it. This two ply is going to be dyed with egg color this week. Process photos to come! This second single I am spinning is actually coming out really thin and lovely. I may attempt to chain ply for the first time when this is finished. I may or may not be dying this one. I'll know better after my experimentation on the first plied yarn.
The next thing I have to show you is COLORFUL! This is some Debrah Norville yarn I have had for a while in the colorway Gems. I bought it without an idea of what to do wit it because I fell in love with the colors. They are just vibrant and saturated and I love them. So I decided to turn them into socks finally. I am using a formula to work out my stitch counts based on the measurement of my foot, but the pattern is mine! Well, I am using a stitch from a stitch dictionary, but I am designing these socks. It's very exciting. I hope they fit when they are finished! I also hope I am able to get more of this yarn. It might be my favorite color I have ever seen. I do love it so!

In the works

5:57 PM Posted In Beads , Handspun , Knit , shawl , Spindle , WIP Edit This 0 Comments »

So I have a few things in the works at this moment. I have two swap packages that are waiting to go out, and I will show the goodies contained within once the parcels have arrived at their respective recipients. I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise.

Right now on the needles however, I have a shawl. The pattern is called Sargasso and this is a picture of it from the pattern page. It’s absolutely beautiful and I can’t wait to have it finished. As it turns out, it is knitted LONG ways. So each row is 308 stitches long. These rows take a LONG time. However, the pattern is relatively easy. Last night however, disaster struck. I dropped a section of the shawl off my needles and in trying to fix that, I made a huge mess. I contacted the local yarn store via Ravelry and while they kindly got back to me quickly, the news was not good. They told me that lace was extremely difficult to repair once it has been dropped, and the only lady who could probably help would likely charge me for her help. Well.. I am actually already overdrawn on my spending money this month, so that was a no go.

I took a very deep breath, closed myself in a room with no distractions, and began to frog (that is unravel for you non knitter) the shawl. I took it back five rows and ever so carefully began to put the stitches back on the needles. Can you believe I actually got all 308 stitches back onto the needles? It turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I did learn while fixing the shawl that the pattern reverses at one point (row 11 actually) and I missed that the first time through. As fate would happen, the row I put back onto the needles (completely by accident) was row 10. So, three hours later, the shawl is all fixed, the pattern is correct and I have inserted a lifeline. I have admittedly, put it aside for the evening. I need a break until tomorrow.

Oh, I’m making it in this lovely squishy beautiful yarn. You can be jealous. It’s ok. Now. The other thing in the works is not on my needles. It is in fact on my spindle. I’m working on spinning some lovely grey roving into some lovely grey yarn. Why grey? I have no idea. It was the roving that spoke to me so I grabbed it and started spinning it. I’m getting faster with my spinning, but I’m still having trouble with consistency. But that takes practice and I haven’t exactly done A LOT of spinning or anything. I think part of the consistency issue was I was trying to make a slightly thicker yarn, but I keep defaulting to a thinner yarn. I plan to ply the yarn with itself though so hopefully it will all even out to a relatively consistent thickness.

I am wondering though, if I add Easter egg dyes to an already grey yarn of the colors will come as deep jewel tones. I might just leave it grey though. It is a lovely color. It may end up in my etsy shop, or it may end up as a finished item in my etsy shop. Decisions, decisions, decisions.